Heroes' Truth
by Bruteaous
Summary: Ever wonder about the lives of some of the othe heroes and villans on Gundam Wing, like where was Treize really from and what is the origin of the mysterious and beautiful SallyPo? Or what really happened during the fall of the Sanc Kingdom? Read here!
1. The Great Human Fallacy

_**Heroes Truth**_

_**Disclaimer: **_I do not and shall never own _Gundam Wing_. I am simply borrowing it for the time being. ;)

Chapter One: Behold, the Great Human Fallacy

AC 181

Hogvakten Castle

The bullet gray limousine pulled up to the wall surrounding the impressive expanse of Hogvakten Castle Instead of continuing on through the front gates as was usual, the limo stopped at their mouth. Edward didn't have to wonder much at it. These were fast becoming dangerous times in former Europe. The hostilities breeding between foreign dignitaries from Earth and colonies had come full circle and almost every nation was struggling with its own form of internal terror seeping from the outside inward.

Edward, 2nd Duke Icely stepped from the side of the limo and stood up, taking in his new surroundings without the added interference of the tinted windows he had been reduced to scrutinizing the environment through on the long drive from the capitol.

The foliage around them was sparse and green. There were some manicured bushes near the entrance, but what mostly overran the premise were the remnants of the old forest before many of the trees had been cleared.

The trees surrounding them were, in their majority, sycamores and oaks. Edward didn't have any difficulty recognizing them. The woods surrounding their old family estate in the country where his family had spent their summers had been papered with them. He could remember climbing many such trees as a boy in that peaceful place which seemed so far away now.

Briefly, Edward closed his eyes. Without moving an inch from where he stood, he was transported away from the castle and found himself soaring high above the ground and everything limited to it. Continuing over acres of forests and distant rivers; finally ending his journey in a field of tall grasses. And though it was as generic a field as one anywhere on Earth, he knew this one specifically. Knew it by the whispers of the chill breeze of that stormy summer and also by the smell of dew on the trees surrounding the clearing which, if pursued, would lead into the fringes of the Icely country estate.

Walking waist high in the long grasses, he ran his hands along the harmless blades, still damp with the residue of the earlier morning's rain.

"_Edward!"_

A voice calling him in the distance, he knew that voice. It was Katrina's when she was a girl.

"_Edward!"_

And all of the sudden, he was no longer in the field, but high above the ground again, only this time, thankfully stationary. He was instead sitting on a tree branch in a sycamore somewhere on the grounds nearer to the main house, though where he was exactly he couldn't say. He saw his hands resting on the branch holding him and in their smallness he knew he was a boy again.

"_Edward! Come and play!" _

He bent over the branch holding him, craning his neck to try and catch a glimpse of his sister. Where was she? He could hear her, but couldn't see her.

"_Katrina!" _

He knew that voice. It belonged to their late father. For a time, when they were still quite young, Rhys 1st Duke Icely had been healthy enough to play along with his children in their impish games, but as the years went by he had grown steadily sicker. Edward was almost glad to see him pass. He had been in so much pain then. The years had not been kind to him as they would be to his children.

Edward caught a glimpse of yellow out of the corner of his eye and saw his sister running on the ground beneath him in the yellow sundress that had been her favorite that summer. She ran to the base of the tree he was in and crouched around the back of it, hiding, until finally giving into her curiosity and peaking slowly around the other side of the sycamore in search of her pursuer. But their father, still young and fit, had already caught up with her and rounded on the other side of the tree, catching his surprised daughter in his arms. Katrina squeaked, but broke out into a delighted fit of giggles as he lifted her up and twirled her around and around in the yard below.

It was a day skirted with grey clouds just like the day of their father's funeral. Even in a dream he could not escape the thought of his own mortality creeping up on him. It was then that the tree itself seemed to move and he along with it, over, over, over to where no one went anymore. Above everything, he was shrouded in the sycamore's thicket of branches, the breeze blowing through his boyish dark hair as he leaned over the stone wall adjoining the Icely family plot and the master stone beneath which he would someday lay beside his forefathers.

Edward opening his eyes, awakened out of his dreams to the fresh zeal of a cobalt blue sky. Sycamores had slowly become his favorite out of all of the trees on the grounds to climb.

"Your grace!"

Another voice brought him out of his reverie and this time it was not his sister's.

Edward turned and noticed a younger man scampering up the gravel driveway towards him. When he reached the gates his pace slowed to a brisk walk and when he was only a couple steps from the duke, he bowed nervously a little too lowly towards the ground.

"Your grace."

"Mr. Mortimer." Edward intoned with a slight nod of his head.

The timid young man smiled halfheartedly. "We've been expecting you, sir."

Edward nodded back to the driver to continue on as they had planned before he took to the drive up towards the castle face. "Who is 'we' besides you and I?"

The young man swallowed. "Commander Noventa and Generals Septum and Cross from the western and eastern fronts, respectively and then Generals Cromwell and Guise from the northern and southern fronts."

"A full house." _but which one is the fool? _He finished mentally.

"I am to announce you and show you in."

For that, the host was given a decisive snort that he winced at.

"Very well, then."

They entered through one of the larger courtyards down the winding sandstone paths and through the endless geometric shapes filled with every variety and color of flower. Edward turned to look behind him wearily more than once. They could have entered through the front of the castle, but instead the nervous young envoy had led him around to the side of the castle and through a great stretch of the garden before leading him through the courtyard they were in now.

Edward swallowed down the sudden fears that were beginning to swell within him. He could remember when he and his sister Katrina were children and his grandfather had told him the story of Henry VII of England and of the many assassination plots that had been brought against him. Their own ancestor, the first Earl Icely had been caught conspiring with some of the other descendants of the former king Edward who had believed they had a claim to the throne and along with those conspirators had been hung, drawn, and quartered for high treason. Their family was different now. They had fled to France and then to Germany before finally settling into the newly formed Sanc Kingdom. His grandfather had endeared himself to the former king William I Peacecraft as his father would to his son William II and as he would to the reigning Peacecraft king Reginald.

Edward cleared his throat. Though his family had been the villains in one story, they were not bad people and in this kingdom of peace, they had the chance to show their true colors for what they really were: good peace loving people. What they had been didn't matter and King Peacecraft understood that. Everyone deserved a second chance. So long as people had the ability to change for the better then so could the world in its entirety.

Just then, a thought occurred to the duke, his eyes widened and his pace slowed.

_He would approach Henry with a knife secreted about his person, bow low to him, and then when the king bent to acknowledge him, would stab him right in the heart…_

One of Edward's fists balled up at this side until his knuckles turned white.

"Mr. Mortimer, how much farther?"

The boy cracked a nervous smile and when he spoke his voice was shaking, "Just a little while up the path, sir."

They came to a place where the ancient stone walls gave way to a wall of glass reinforced every few frames with iron gilding. It looked to be some sort of sun room, a walled in terrace. That was a flat plane inside the square of the courtyard. There were doors on either side of the glass, set in the stone, but none leading directly into the sun room they had stopped in front of.

Edward's heartbeat increased and his breathing became less controlled as he noticed no that no one was inside the glass room and no where to be seen anywhere This was not right. They would have come out to meet him, Commander Noventa always did. He was the only noble man in the whole of the Alliance military, Edward was convinced and this was not his way especially when it came to peace negotiations.

The last straw was when he saw the reflection in the old glass wall and the duke paled.

The envoy turned towards Edward and looked at him sheepishly. He couldn't have been older than twelve and the duke noticed that the boy looked shaken, secretly frightened.

"Sir?"

Edward tried to back up but came into contact with another body.

"Your grace." The gruff whispered tone met his ear as he sprang forward, but not far enough.

One of the alliance guards who had entered from the left side door unseen, grabbed him by the back of his uniform coat and stuck a stiletto dagger directly between his shoulder blades. The other soldier, both still unseen, grabbed for a hold on his belt and then came around with another knife that was stabbed into his abdomen, again, and again, and again.

Edward gritted his teeth together as the sudden pain of his body being ripped apart rippled through his consciousness and he starred at the cowering boy in front of him as he tried to struggle against the arms now holding him, there were more than two now.

"Alliance bastards!! Alliance bastards!!"

After his lower back had also been ripped into, his assassins quickly released him and the duke staggered forward, clear blue eyes unseeing as his breathing shallowed and finally Edward's equilibrium waned as he fell forward onto the dry sandstone.

The boy had fled through one of the side doors already and almost as soon as Edward's body had hit the ground, his assassins had quietly walked out of the courtyard leaving his corpse to water the remaining flowers with the slowly cooling blood that continued to drain out of him as it ran into the soil on the edges of the pathway.

----

"Milli!" the toddler's voice squeaked its distress as the little girl hurried after her brother as he raced down one of the long marble corridors of their palace home. "Milli!"

Milliardo Peacecraft ran faster, picking up speed as his infant sister, who had only recently learned to walk, slowly moved after him while their nurse carefully shadowed her.

"Young prince, you must slow down!" The nurse chided him. "Your sister is too small yet to match your pace. It distresses her when she cannot catch up with you."

Milliardo stopped and turned around, an excited gleam in his eyes that showed the five year old's cares were anywhere but focused on his baby sister. "But Nada, Uncle is coming! He is supposed to arrive back from Hogvakten this morning!"

The middle aged woman smiled at the boy's enthusiasm as she held onto the princess's arms to keep her steady on her tiny feet. The 2nd Duke Icely and his children were frequent visitors to the palace and the duke always seemed to make time during his visits for his favorite nephew.

"Yes, I heard." The nurse commented, "Your mother told me she would be expecting him this morning."

The prince smiled and took off running down the hall again, rounding every bend he came across. He would not slow for his sister's cries, nor did he stop at his nurse's chastisement. He only slowed for the guards to open the doors leading out into the main courtyard for him and without losing pace, he picked up speed again and bounded over the stoop of four stairs leading out into the driveway. But his uncle was not there to meet him nor was his limo waiting in the drive.

Instead there was only a man dressed in a suit speaking with his father's secretary at the front gate. The man looked to be a limo driver and from where the prince could see as he held the same type of hat his father's man wore to his chest and his head was bowed. As Milliardo watched them, his father's secretary nodded his head a few times, and then moved away as the other man disappeared beyond the gate.

As he continued forward, the grimace on his face was unmistakable. Something had happened and the prince had a sinking feeling in his stomach that told him that, for whatever reason, his uncle was not coming to see them today.

The king's secretary Mr. Otto, who was generally very friendly towards the children but otherwise a bit of a starched shirt when it came to the mark of his office, almost always acknowledged Milliardo whenever he saw him in the corridors or at the family meals to which the man was sometimes invited he would often give the prince his dessert as he always said he had no appetite for sweets, but today he did not even give the boy a simple glance of acknowledgment as he stormed towards the house.

Milliardo, looked back towards the gate. The driver was gone and his uncle was not here. Something was terribly wrong. His uncle never missed a visit. What could have happened? Whatever it was, he intended to find out.

Mr. Otto traipsed down the hall, stomping almost in a grim imitation of the guards patrolling the grounds outside. He was not looking forward to giving this news to his majesties…especially to the Queen Katrina.

King Peacecraft continued down one of the corridors on the way to one of his meeting rooms where he was supposed to meet with one or more of his advisors before he joined his family for the morning meal. His long blond hair, slowly fading to white in some places with the stress of his office and also as a sign of his age, swayed slightly in time with his movements as he walked.

Without stopping, he rubbed at his eyes. King or no king, he was never one for early mornings. The day would have seemed a thousand times more dismal if he had not run into his children's nurse and his small daughter who cooed up at him.

"Relena!" He called to her stopping to bend down to her.

"Papa!"

The little girl reached up for him to pick her up and he happily obliged her as she giggled when he lifted her up and settled her against his shoulder.

"How are you, my dear?" He asked her, knowing that she was too young to respond.

Instead, she cooed up at him again and giggled loudly when he tickled her under her arm. Smiling, he kissed her forehead and handed her back to her nurse.

"Mrs. Nada." He nodded to her. "How is she this morning?"

"Well, your majesty." The lady replied with a small curtsey. "Though I fear she has inherited the Queen's penchant for early morning strolls."

The King smiled and backed down a small laugh. "Indeed, she looks more like the queen every day." Then he took a deep breath and inclined his head to her. "If you will excuse me, Mrs. Nada" and then he reached out his finger to his daughter who took it with her tiny hand as he kissed it, "Sweetheart."

With that he passed them and continued on his way down the corridor, towards the council chamber. Earlier in the week, he had asked his brother-in-law, the Duke Icely to travel to the village of Hogvakten and meet with leading Alliance officials to discuss terms of diplomatic interaction. Ever since the beginning of his reign, the Alliance Military had been trying to coerce his government to surrender their kingdom to martial law that the countries of all over the world were accepting, but he had always declined.

At first, when he was young man, he had actually considered the prospect, but after the assassination of the Heero Yuy in the colonies, he had strengthened his opposition to the proposition.

Reginald was not a young man anymore, however, he was still one of the most powerful men in former Europe and so long as he held out hope that peace could still be achieved in a world at war, others would too and that was a start in the right direction.

As he entered the antechamber leading to the room where his council was waiting to begin its morning session, he noticed his secretary standing in front of the wooden double doors.

"Mr. Otto." The king greeted him, somewhat in a hurry.

"Your majesty." The man inclined his head but did not give his customary bow.

"What is it?" The king asked eager to get past him and on to conducting the work of the day.

Otto went silent, his head slightly bowed as he refused to look the king in the eye and instead focused on the black and white marble tiles of the floor.

"Forgive me, your majesty, but I have some terrible news for your majesties." He finally looked up as the king waited impatiently for him to continue. "The Duke of Icely was murdered yesterday morning. His driver found him in the garden of Hogvakten Castle. He had been stabbed to death though the driver swears there was no one else present at the time that he found him. There was no sign of Marshal Noventa or the generals of the four fronts and the driver was not sure if they had even arrived at all."

The king's expression sobered as he stood still now, his former impatience vanished. Quiet stretched in between them for a few moments, the only sounds in the foyer coming from the idle chatter of the men inside the council chamber.

"Should I tell the queen, your majesty or would you rather do that yourself?"

The king's moustache twitched as he gave no other clues as to what his real emotions were as he thought of telling his wife that her only brother had been killed on a peaceful mission to meet with Alliance delegates.

Reginald took a deep breath and looked back to his secretary who had been watching him thoughtfully as the silence between them wore on.

"You are given my permission to tell her." The king finally said. "I have affairs of state that cannot be delayed any further and it is imperative that she is informed as soon as possible."

"Yes, your majesty." Otto finally bowed, though it was not hard to tell that it was forced as his posture was too rigid to allow for any real type of movement. "I shall go to her now."

However, the king caught his secretary's elbow to stop the man before he marched off like a mobile suit again. "Be gentle when you tell her, Otto. With her sister and parents gone, Edward was all she had left of her family. I do not want to see my queen go the way so many others who have lost everything have." The last came out as a barely audible whisper, but Otto recognized it as a command as well as a tender warning. "She must not lose hope. It is not an easy thing to keep alive in this world, as it is now."

"Yes, majesty." Otto bowed again and was gone.

The king halted and swallowed the lump that was forming in his throat that he was refusing to show. Though he felt the ache in his chest when he thought of his brother-in-law, who had become as close to him as any of his own brothers were, laying in cold blood on hostile soil, he also knew one important thing that over shadowed what he was feeling.

Men of power did not shed tears where others could see them.

It was imperative for a man of power, any man of power be he a royal, a senator, or a military leader to exercise control over his emotions in order to prove to those who he served that he was worthy of the office he held.

But King Reginald Peacecraft was also a kindhearted man, a human man and he would shed tears with his wife, just the two of them, later and in private. Where prying eyes could not discern weakness from genuine heartache and try to use it against them.

Clearing his throat one last time, he nodded to his guards and entered the chamber where his ambassadors and diplomats awaited him.

---

As Otto hurried down the hall in search of the queen, he was approached by an unwanted party. Sighing, he grimaced internally, as Theodore the 18th Duke Khushrenada strode up beside him, having no problem keeping up with the brisk pace the elder man set.

"Mr. Otto."

"Your Excellency." The secretary intoned, his eyes not stopping their search of the halls for the queen as he advanced his pace a bit faster. "What may I do for you, sir?"

"Is what they say in town true? Was our foreign ambassador murdered at Hogvakten?"

Otto sighed. News did not travel slowly to the king's court, especially not when it came to his own family connections. Of anybody else in the capitol, Theodore Khushrenada was probably the first to know about the fate of the Duke Icely, even before himself.

"Yes, Excellency."

There was silence for a moment between them. They both knew that the consequences stemming from this event would be dire. Though the king put on a brave face for his people, they were afraid, seriously afraid of what the Alliance could do to them. Like many of the other countries, which had not surrendered willingly to military control, they ran the risk of being invaded and taken over and Theodore very much doubted that the Alliance soldiers would show this kingdom or its people mercy. It was not their way.

Finally, he spoke again.

"We have been severely compromised, then." The Duke said more to himself than to the secretary. "Does the queen know?"

"Not yet, Excellency, I am just on my way to find her."

"Well, Godspeed." Theodore sighed, bringing his pocket watch out of his breast pocket and looking at it a moment before picking up his pace. "You will excuse me, Mr. Otto."

"Of course, Excellency, I would not want to keep you." The secretary was careful to keep the disdain he held for the tall man out of his voice as the other turned down another corridor, but still within hearing range. Once Otto was sure the Duke would not hear, he continued disrespectfully under his breath, "Wouldn't want to keep your arse from flattening those purple cushions on your mistress' bed you love to frequent so much, your Excellency."

As he came to another corridor, he bounded over the half step decline in the floor as he walked along the one wall that was all windows and then he stopped.

Queen Katrina was walking out in the gardens distractedly holding a leather bound book in her hand that she was reading as she walked down one of the paths and came to a gracefully halt at foot of one of the fountains there. The youthful lady, only in her late twenties, maintained an air of natural grace which went far beyond her years and an irresistible charm which went so much farther than her pedigree.

And her charm was not limited to her personality traits. The good lady was also a beautiful woman. Her honey brown hair ran down her shoulders to mid back, though she quite often took the pains to put it up every day into some sort of style, always classical and modern at the same time. She was also tall and slight, yet well proportioned and often dazzled guests to the palace with the brilliance of a straight, white smile.

Even the king's secretary would admit that he had been awed with her upon first impression. She was in no way an ordinary woman and Otto and his wife had a running bet that her daughter would be the same way.

Mr. Otto had worked for many lords and politicians during his lifetime, but out of all of the noble ladies he had met, she was the most innocent, the most genuinely pure of heart and the most kind woman he had ever known. Both he and his wife Nada owed their place in the palace to her. After a royal visit to the home of Peter 17th Duke Khushrenada, the then minister of domestic affairs and Theodore's eldest brother, she had written the strict minded duke requesting the employ of both Mr. Otto and his wife. Though the king already had a steward and they king and queen did not have children at the time so they were in need of no nanny, the queen took them in after seeing how the former General Khushrenada had treated them in his household. She had made jobs for them, until the king could find more permanent placements for them.

Otto started. He and his wife owed everything they had to her heartfelt kindness and good graces and he was not looking forward to this next conversation. Steadying himself, he took a deep breath and straightened his shoulders, standing taller, gathering the courage for what he knew he was obligated in more ways than one to tell her and he wasn't the only one who owe her for some kind act she had committed on their behalf.

The people loved their queen and they had every right to.

As he was about to start down the corridor towards the terrace doors that led out ingot the garden, he noticed a new presence in the courtyard. The queen had closed her book and stuffed it under her arm, as she smiling, turned to where his wife and the princess Relena were just coming into view beyond the fountain. He watched as his wife relinquished the little girl and the queen knelt down as the infant toddled on unsteady feet towards her, giggling and cooing happily.

He couldn't do this. He couldn't. He was a coward and he knew it. As he watched the queen pick up her daughter and twirl her around before hugging her to her and saw his wife smile, he knew didn't have the heart for this nor the stomach. He just couldn't.

As he watched the queen coddle her only girl, he bowed his head as his eyes landed instead on the smiling face of his beloved wife. _I'm sorry_.

With that, he turned and started back the way he had come, bounding back over the half step and disappearing around the corner into the next corridor.

----

"_Touche_."

The young prince grimaced as the muted point of the foil held to his chest. Milliardo didn't have to open his eyes to know it was their nor did he have to open they to see the self imposed smirk on his opponent's face, nor the proud light in his dark blue eyes.

Milliardo nodded his defeat grudgingly and felt the pressure of the foil against his chest lessen, but not leave him entirely. "I thought your uncle was coming today? I was looking forward to seeing him again."

"As was I, but he has not arrived yet."

"Pity." The older boy's voice uttered calmly, an invisible smile to its tone as he spoke his next words. "Do you surrender, _your highness_?"

The last two words were soaked through in a sarcastic drawl. Milliardo narrowed his eyes and his grip unconsciously tightened around the hilt of his blade, but he nodded his consent and the other boy lowered his foil, stepping slowly away from the prince while also turning his back on him.

The prince's first instinct was to attack him, but he knew better. Only a coward would stab an opponent when they were at an unfair advantage. He didn't need to fight underhandedly to win.

His opponent, seemingly oblivious to Milliardo's internal struggle, ran one hand through his short brown hair and turned around to face him again.

"You fought well. Wherever the Duke Icely is, he should be proud of you. You're fast improving."

Instead of the indignation he had felt rising to the surface earlier, a touch of red rose to Milliardo's cheeks against his wishes at the unexpected compliment.

"You're not bad yourself, Treize."

Seeing, the indirect acknowledgement for what it was, the elder Treize Khushrenada smiled confidently.

"It was nothing. The Duke Icely taught us both well. It is only fitting that you should catch up to me in time."

That struck a cord in Milliardo. "Catch up to you? I'll best you."

"Don't get over confident." Treize egged him on. "Success does not lend itself to small minds and arrogance."

Small minds and what?!

Milliardo's eyes widened as the indignation rose in him again and stayed there as he raised the point of his foil to be level with Treize's collarbone. To the young prince's dismay, however, his cousin did not flinch at the sudden movement. Instead, the other smiled in a manner that made Milliardo even angrier with him and, if at all possible, stood taller, prouder than he had been before.

"You'll never best me, my friend, if you allow yourself to be over taken by anger every time we face each other."

Milliardo's eyes narrowed to tiny blue slits and without warning he lunged forward, but Treize had anticipated his attack and had dodged to the side and rounded on him almost too fast for the younger of the two to retaliate. However, before Treize could land his first point, his opponent had parried the blow and was moving into position for another lunge.

_Good, Milliardo, but not good enough._

With a graceful effortlessness, Treize sidestepped the coming attack as it reached him and before his opponent could recover, he brought the circular edge of his blade to rest against the underside of his prince's neck. The move did not grant Treize a point, but it did effectively stop his opponent and put them at an impasse.

"A perfect resolution to our little _tète a tète_ do you not think so, cousin?"

Milliardo swallowed, the underside of his skin moving against the steel membrane of the foil as the muscles in his throat retracted with the action.

"It was not fair."

"Oh?" Treize asked. The other's ire rose as he recognized the upbeat note of amusement in his older cousin's voice. "And how was it unfair?"

"You know how." Milliardo snorted.

He was just grasping at straws and he knew it, but Treize had already wounded his pride, he would not allow him to get the last word in too.

When the prince dared a glance up at the boy still holding his blade to his throat, he noticed Treize staring at him in a strange manner, as if coming to some conclusion about something very important.

Then to Milliardo's surprise the foil at his neck was lowered and Treize stepped away from him.

"Perhaps, you're right." He conceded initiating a stunned silence between them for a few moments before Treize walked over and replaced his foil next to the untouched practice mask on the wall.

The prince was flabbergasted. He didn't know what to think. Was his usually so-self-assured cousin accepting his flawed logic as the actual truth? Even, Milliardo knew it was said just to spite him. He didn't mean anything by it, really.

"Where are you going?" Milliardo asked. "We still have one more match to go?"

"Not today, cousin, I have other things to take care of."

The prince just stared at his friend, at a loss for what to say. Treize had never bowed out of a match before, never would he even consider it. Wait a second…

"Treize!"

The other boy stopped as he reached the door and turned to back to regard the prince.

"The knight." Milliardo swallowed again before he could continue. "The chess piece. It's yours for the day."

It was a custom between the two boys which had been started by their first great fencing teacher, the Duke Icely, in which whoever won the last bout of a match would be granted the carved and painted wooden knight of one of the antique chess sets in the game hall. The small prize would denote who the best of them was until their next fight and the loser had the right to try to claim back the prize and their own personal honor.

It was to remind them what it was they were fighting for, not any one material thing, but for themselves, for what they were and what the world was to them. In the practice room, all of it could be made and unmade by one fell stroke of a foil. All you were, depended on how you fought and what motivated you to do so. That was the measure of a man.

"Keep it." Treize said, starting out of the doorway of the practice room and out into the foreyard without missing a beat. "Be the better man for now."

Milliardo took a few uncertain steps forward still holding his foil in one hand as if he expected his opponent to come back, but as he heard the soft footsteps fade away through the grass, he knew better.

Alone with himself and his thoughts, the prince brought his foil up so that the point shone in the mid afternoon light splaying through the open doorway under his thoughtful gaze.

He knew why his cousin had abandoned him. Treize had become fed up with his overzealous pride, his need to always win and to counter, to beat him one last time in the most graceful way he could: Treize Khushrenada had bowed out of their match respectfully, with dignity and with honor. His cousin had refused to continue a fight that, on the _fairer_ field, he could only win by relinquishing his claim to the winning title, a claim he had well deserved but would not take without being given consent, however grudgingly.

Treize had given him a choice.

_Be the better man for now_.

Angry with himself, Milliardo threw the foil down so hard that it bounced off the hardwood floor of the practice room and rolled to a stop in a semicircle, the rounded blade tip bent beyond recognition just like the young man's pride.

----

"Richard!"

The hunters coming in from the woods on horseback preceded by their dogs had been the first sight that had greeted Treize after departing the prince, to wander the grounds and they had only advanced close enough for him to recognize one of the younger men as his brother, Richard Khushrenada riding beside the former Baron Ackley's son.

The stopped their horses near the stables and dismounted so their grooms could take them. Richard removed his gloves and continued to walk towards the main house of the palace with Sebastian Ackley at his heels.

"So Cecile isn't that good in bed?" Richard asked uninterestedly, just trying to pass the time.

"What does it matter now? We're stuck together." The newly titled Baron ran his hand through his short, sweaty hair in tandem pushing it back from his face.

"Come, come now, Ackley." Richard continued, slapping his once white gloves against his black riding pants to get the dust off of them and not really caring. "You and I both know that marriage is not a prerequisite to fidelity. Just because you are married does not mean you have to be faithful to your wife."

Sebastian shook his head with a smirk that precluded indecent thoughts, "It's too much work to find myself a decent mistress. Besides, I need a legitimate son. I should sleep with her for at least that long, don't you think?"

Richard gave his companion an incredulous glance as the other's eyes dropped to his boots.

"I want a family." Sebastian defended himself when he finally felt Richard's cold stare finally leave him. "And she's really not that bad."

Richard sighed and looked forward towards the house where his younger brother was beginning to walk to meet him.

"You know." He began, watching his brother in his slow, measured gate. "It is 'ever the fool who falls in love' as they say." Richard paused, tossing a steely look towards Sebastian, "But today we are both guests of the King. Good luck with your family, Baron."

With that Richard left the Baron Ackley speechless behind him, and advanced on Treize. As he came closer to the ten year old, a genuine smile spread over his face. Granted there was an age difference of five years between the two, but despite it, if there was anyone in this insane, screwed up world that Richard Khushrenada was close to it was his little brother.

"Treize!"

The younger boy jogged the last few remaining steps between them and his older brother caught him in a tight hug on the last step.

"I thought I would not see you before you went back to school." Treize said, pulling out of the embrace, a little sheepishly to his credit.

"You thought I would be able to go back without coming to see my favorite brother?"

"Sorry that you would have to make such a hard choice, but I am afraid I am your only brother."

"Well, I would choose you anyway." Richard continued the running joke between them. "Not that Pasha wouldn't make a fabulous boy, but I much prefer her the way she is."

"And I am sure she would appreciate your reasoning in that respect." Treize returned with an equal smile.

Richard released his brother completely except for one arm which he held loosely by the elbow to coax him to start back towards the house where Richard could change out of his riding clothes and the two could have lunch together before he had to leave again for his boarding school in Brussels that evening.

"Come, we'll have lunch together." Richard continued on, with Treize following closely beside him. Then the elder purposefully lagged a step behind and lassoed his arm around his brother's neck, restraining him next to his chest in an informal half nelson before bending down to whisper in his ear, "Perhaps then you can tell me about the women you have been so shamelessly flirting with at court and one in particular I have heard _interesting_ stories about."

With minimal effort, Treize pulled out of the loose restraint and bounded enthusiastically forward towards the house, never once looking his brother in the eye. "Done!"

----

Mr. Otto sat in the southward study facing the garden the queen and his wife were now in with the young princess through an open wall of windows. His breathing was labored from rushing through the palace to find them after coming back and realizing that they were no longer in the northern gardens. A fresh sheen of sweat covered the skin of his slightly drooping face and neck while it also served to plaster the silvery threads of his graying hair to the old steward's forehead.

He was too old for this.

Outside, in the garden, his wife had put her hands over her eyes and was crouching next to one of the fountains in the yard, counting down from some number he could not hear while the queen led her daughter behind a nearby bush, holding the giggling little girl as they took to their hiding place.

Then his wife, finished with counting, stood up and began looking around the bushes and a couple statues comically appearing stumped when she didn't find her expected quarry in each spot, though he was sure the little girl's constant giggles had already given away their hiding place.

He smiled and let the shadow of a laugh escape his lips as his wife, 'by accident', stumbled upon the queen's hiding place and the little princess squealed jovially as they were found. The queen smiled down at her and hefted her daughter up with her to settle her against her hip as she stood, standing to talk to his wife who was also smiling.

Otto bowed his head and ran his hand over his drying face and hair, letting a deep breath rip from his lungs.

He couldn't do this. Ever since he had been brought to this house, he had devoted himself to being the royal family's most capable servant, but this, this he could not do. He just couldn't….but he had too.

The Duke of Icely was dead and he had been the first one in court to know about it so naturally it was he who had to tell the queen that her only brother was dead. Him. It was _his_ job. No one else's.

Otto moved his hands from the back of his neck where they had stopped and brought them down to hold his face, hiding his eyes from the, beautiful sunlight, seeming all too abrasive to him in his gloomy stupor.

God forgive him for having to hurt the most noble lady in all the world on this most beautiful of days, for he was not about to forgive himself.

Just then his wife walked in through the side doors and he looked up at her as she turned to close them. She almost walked right past him in the relative dimness of the room, but then spotted him and started.

"Oh dear!" Nada brought a hand to her chest as she recovered from her surprise and took a deep breath. "You startled me, Otto."

He gave her a weak smile. "Sorry, I hadn't meant to."

"It's alright, beloved, but why are you sitting alone here in the dark?" Nada seemed confused as she came to sit beside him on the ottoman he was occupying. "I thought you had a meeting with the foreign ambassador who was arriving today?"

Otto swallowed the lump in his throat. All he wanted was to curl up in his wife's arms and surrender to the day, but he couldn't do that, not here.

"Otto?" Nada laid her hand on his where it rested on his knee. "What's wrong?"

He blinked his eyes several times and cleared his throat to keep the emotion from his voice.

"It was canceled." He managed weakly, before trying to change the subject. "Why are you not out in the garden playing with the queen and the princess?"

Nada seemed not to buy his little attempt at distraction, she had known him too long for that, but she sighed and indulged him.

"The queen wanted a few moments alone with her, just long enough for them to play together so she relieved me for a few hours."

_Great. That makes what I have to do even harder_, Otto thought as he rubbed at his eyes tiredly with his free hand.

"Otto."

The quiet call brought his attention back to her and Nada squeezed his hand in hers and his eyes finally met her own.

"I know how often your meetings get canceled." Her voice was quiet as she addressed him and the weariness in Otto grew, knowing where she was going with this. "We've been here for seven years and this is the only meeting of yours you haven't attended. Now, tell me, what's happened?"

Otto swallowed again, but he could not and did not want to run away from the sincere concern in his wife's eyes. They had been married for ever forty years, raised three children together, and had worked together in varying settings all over former Europe. If there was anyone he could tell anything too, it would be her.

Taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly, he looked down at their joined hands instead of directly at her, slightly afraid that the courage he was attempting to muster would drain out of him one he saw the kind worry in those eyes he loved so much.

"The Duke Icely, he…" Otto swallowed as his throat tried to close up on him. "He was murdered at the Alliance summit meeting yesterday morning."

He heard his wife's shocked intake of breath and moved to hold her, his hands at her waist to keep her steady, but she brought her hand up to her chest and held it over her heart. Closing her eyes, Nada leaned heavily against him as the new sunk in.

"God deliver him." She whispered, failing to keep the emotion out of her voice and one tear from sliding down her cheek. "He was a good man."

Silence stretched between them, the only sounds being Nada's quiet hitching sobs barely breaking the sound barrier between them.

Finally, wiping away her tears, Nada turned to look at her husband, who held a similar fear in his eyes.

"Does the queen know?"

"I….I have to tell her, still." Otto managed looking back out through the windows where he caught a glimpse of sandy blonde as the queen darted from one side of a bush to another, the little girl trying to catch her, smiling and giggling her delight with every attempt. "I saw the two of you with the princess in the northern garden earlier, but I thought it an in opportune moment to approach her."

They both watched as the little princess toddled around the bush and finally caught her mother's dress, effectively stopping the queen with a goofy grin on her face.

Nada's eyes began to tear up again at the innocent sight. "It's so cruel. He was so young and what about his family? His children will have to grow up without their father. It's so unfair. And the queen and the children….the poor dears."

Otto nodded his agreement, but kept silent, watching as Relena was twirled around in her mother's arms before being brought to rest against her hip as they walked up to one of the fountains, the queen pointing out some of the small fish in the water to her daughter's complete awe.

Then he felt his wife's hand on his knee and he looked up at her. Nada's face was wet with the residue of newly shed tears, but her eyes had taken on a controlled outer calm that he could not muster.

Taking a shaky breath, she spoke. "She must know, Otto. You cannot keep this from her."

Otto swallowed for what seemed like the hundredth time, but his nerves still rose up in him again like a bed of stabbing needles.

"But she's with the princess." The weak excuse sounded like a joke, even to him and he was unsurprised when Nada stood, his hand still in hers, nudging him to do the same.

"I can take the girl, but you cannot keep this from her. It will destroy you inside if you do and it's not fair to her. You know it, I know you do."

He did. Slowly, Otto rose and held his wife's hand in his own, taking solace from her silent strength as they both opened a door and entered into the sunlit garden together.

----

Forte de Crecy

Calais, Former France

It was past sundown and evening had settled over the coastline. The waves smashing against the beach rocks were well hidden by the moonless darkness as were the men running undetected around the perimeter of the Alliance Forte de Crecy.

They had split up into groups early, so each faction of men was on their own if they were found out before the mission was accomplished.

There were many on Earth who had been labeled 'colony sympathizers' and were been pursued for treason against the Earth Sphere Alliance as rebels and terrorist extremists. The population of these people was believed by military intelligence to be highest in the coastal regions, as that was where the traitors had gone into hiding hoping not to be caught in the obscure towns there.

A large group, calling themselves the 'Libertines' was rumored to be entrenched around Calais, though no ground unit had encountered them to conclude that the rumor was true…..yet.

That was all about to change very soon.

Explosions lit up the sky all along the roof tops from one end of the fort to the other and the alarms began to sound as the soldiers who had survived stumbled out of their rooms.

The men outside of the fort, their jobs finished, proceeded to flee, though sirens were going off and men were shouting all around them. Out of a one of the groups of men, two stood out from the rest.

Two young boys.

One was in his early teens, the other one still younger.

There was absolute confusion as shouts could be heard behind them as well as the droning of the sirens, which almost canceled out every other sound in their ears.

The smaller of the two boys, lagging behind in the tail of fleeing men tripped, his toe caught on a piece of debris from the explosion which upset his balance and hit the ground hard.

He did not get up, but instead cradled his knee bleeding from the fall.

"Eugene!"

The older boy came back for him and picked him up, trying to hurry him along as the shouts behind them got louder and louder and trucks being revved up in pursuit egged them on.

Still, the smaller of the two struggled as he hobbled on, tears running down his cheeks at both his own fear and from the stinging pain in his knee.

"Eugene! Hurry up!!" Frustration edged the other's voice, "Eugene, hu-"

The older boy would have said more, but the crude connecting of a rifle butt with the side of his head caused him to fall face down in the mud of the night. The younger squealed as he was grabbed sharply by his collar and restrained kicking and punching by two soldiers.

Several groups of the rebels ahead of them had also been caught and were being restrained in similar groups of soldiers, half uniformed and fully armed.

"Hey!"

The two soldiers holding the boy Eugene Poirson, both just rudely awakened from a good night's sleep, were having a lot of trouble restraining the kid's flailing limbs.

"Boy! Knock that the hell off!"

Finally, one of them caught a particularly close thrashing arm and reciprocated with his own fist, causing the boy to stop struggling for the most part and continue sobbing only quietly.

As he cried, the boy opened his eyes to slits. The darkness blurred in his watery vision to light and then became very bright as a military jeep pulled to a stop in front of them.

"I grow tired of these gorilla attacks executed by cowards late in the night." The staff officer next to the driver grumbled under the engine's roar. "Don't they know we'll catch them anyway?"

The man, still relatively young, jumped out of the jeep, two soldiers stepping from the back of car and flanking him with machine guns.

Eugene couldn't really tell what he looked like, as most everything but the man's profile was lost to him in the uncomfortable glare from the jeep's headlights.

A soldier stepped in front of him and saluted the staff officer.

"At ease, Lieutenant." His voice was smooth, but sharp like silk with barbed wire at the edges, then the officer turned his eyes on to Eugene who was suddenly shaking. "I am Colonel Auber and you, young man, are under arrest for treason and for threatening the peace of the Earth Sphere."

The colonel stepped up close to him and Eugene could smell the distinct potency of his aftershave as the colonel grabbed his chin and examined his bleeding lip which was beginning to swell. Then Colonel Auber turned and motioned towards the prone boy on the ground. "Lieutenant Halevy, check on him."

The soldier who had saluted the colonel walked over to the still body laying face down in the mud and slid his hand under his neck, feeling for a pulse. Then not finding one, he turned back to his superior.

"He's dead, sir. His skull was probably fractured in the hit."

Eugene's sobs weren't silent anymore and as he turned towards him the colonel, knew the two boys had been close. Auber pulled a small dagger from his belt and, holding the crying boy's face, he cut a small gash in his cheek.

"His life for a little of your blood." Auber stepped away from him and looked to all of his men and then back down to the boy. "I claim both for the young men you killed here today, _my men_."

The last few words were spoken with a vehemence which made Eugene cower in the arms that held him as the colonel returned his attention to him for effect and then looked back at the lieutenant as he began to bark orders.

"Throw him in prison with the other young ones. Take all of the captured men old enough to carry or operate a weapon to the shooting grounds, tie them up and assemble a firing squad. Tell every soldier who lost a friend here tonight to each grab a gun, they deserve a little target practice after all of this."

Lieutenant Halevy snapped back into the attention position and saluted as the colonel passed him. "Yes sir!"

Colonel Auber passed him without acknowledging him, then hopped back into the jeep and drove off back towards the base, bypassing pockets of prisoners being pushed and harassed along by his angry recruits.

It had been an interesting night.

* * *

AN: I hope you all enjoyed the story. Let me know what you thought of it!! Thank you all for reading!!


	2. The Hellraiser

Chapter Two: The Hellraiser 

Forte de Laclos

Amiens, Former France

The usual round of cannon fire sounded the beginning of the training day at Forte de Laclos. The cadets were being roused from their beds for their morning routines, by their commanding officers, many of whom had graduated from training at the same base only months earlier.

Lines of soldiers, newly awakened, still groggy in their pristine uniforms stood at attention in the foreyard of the practice yard awaiting their lead officers. There was complete silence as General Rene Montalembert rode out onto the field on his horse. The elder gentleman was a stickler for decorum and even years after it had been denounced as a typical protocol of formal address, the old general still insisted on riding out onto the field on horseback and also insisted that several of his hand chosen subordinates do so also. It was an odd vein of action and thinking which had bleed out of the modern military centuries earlier, but one which the old General deems crucial to the success of his troops in battle and also in the civil world.

Chivalry: that was the decompressed vein breathed into life anew.

However, such an abstract and outdated ideal was having trouble rooting itself with any sort of permanence in the Alliance military which was the main reason that the few men who believed in it, including the General Montalembert, enforced the conduct of their men using the behavior of their subordinates and themselves as the example to follow by.

"General." One of two flag officers nodded to him in reminder.

Montalembert nodded his understanding that he knew his duty and turned his dappled grey horse towards the lines of men. Sitting proudly in the saddle in full uniform, the sixty something senior officer cut quite an imposing figure.

"Soldiers! My sons!" Montalembert often used the more personal of the two references more often as he felt it to be partially true. He had trained these men since they were cadets in military diapers, it seemed. "An uprising has risen up near Calais. You will all get the honor to fight with a combat commission and perhaps even prove yourselves. What do you have to say to that, men?"

All at once, a chorus of enthusiastic yells rose high above the lines of men and Montalembert sat taller in the saddle at the assuring sound. His boys would go into battle for the first time and they were excited about it. Poor fellows, he thought, his own ardor of the sight dimming some at the reality of it he knew to be awaiting them, but he kept any and all signs of his deflating notions from showing in the expression on his face.

This was one of the first home grown Specials units and Montalembert, as well as his superiors in the Foundation could not deny their impatience to see how it would perform in battle.

A lot of money was going into the production and utilization of Mobile Suits as weapons of war. It was still a rather new an sketchy practice, having begun only in AC 176 and there were many old soldiers, like Montalembert, who did not trust in this new technology as a way of future warfare.

To Montalembert, all of the usual misgivings were understandable with this new and horrid type of warfare.

It was too impersonal. The battlefield lost its humanity once machines that did the work of men were introduced onto it.

However, old dogs who didn't learn new tricks fast did not live long in the world with other animals who had new and more dangerous rules.

Montalembert was an old dog, but he had learned to keep his opinions about mobile suits and fighting in general largely to himself. Very few people did he consider trustworthy in his profession. Very few, indeed.

"Soldiers!"

Their general's sudden shout, caught his troops off guard and immediately silenced their upraised voices.

"You are of the 46th Regiment of Volunteers of the Alliance _Armee de Terre_. Conduct yourselves with pride and with honor! For Justice! For Peace!"

The men gave one last 'hoorah' and the staff officers took them over, organizing them back into silence to continue their morning routines. The general moved his horse cordially, riding comfortably around the grounds and watching his men while they drilled.

"You trained them as well as you could I think." A voice interrupted his thoughts as he was watching one battalion tackle an obstacle course, half of the unit lagging substantially behind. "Besides, you always said war was final system that weeded out the men from the boys."

Rene recognized that voice as belonging to one of the first soldiers he had ever trained at the academy and one of his best students.

General Ferdinand Catalonia pulled his black horse alongside Montalembert's, posture tall and square in the saddle, piercing blue eyes staring at his former instructor with an amusing challenge, as if daring him to second guess his old student now.

Instead, Rene smiled and saluted the eldest of the Catalonia brothers, only recently promoted two ranks, "General."

Ferdinand cracked a grin and saluted in tandem, addressing his former commander with his hereditary title to distinguish them from one another, "Marquis."

"At ease, son." Rene shook his head, his expression slightly bemused. "Mon Dieu, lad, how you've aged. How old are you now?"

"I turn twenty nine in early August, sir."

Montalembert's expression mellowed and he seemed more of the thoughtfully well aged gentleman than the austere old general he always had been.

"My, how so much can change in the span of just eleven years. I remember serving with your father in Barcelona almost thirty years ago. Did you know we graduated the Military Academy in the Ile-de-France together? "

The general seemed like a man again or better yet a child still with his humanity intact, not a soldier who had fought through and seen so much.

"How are your brothers?" Montalembert asked with a certain subdued level of excitement.

Ferdinand nodded as he directed his attention elsewhere. "Arthur is a general now too with a family in the Lorraine and Victor is still in field training near Liege with the 20th ground division."

Ferdinand smiled a little to himself. "Victor will graduate in May and the 20th will be redirected to Luxembourg before being given their first assignment."

Montalembert chuckled, a full hearty sound that erupted through his chest, "There's always something to say about you Catalonias. Always the soldiers."

"Yes, sir." Ferdinand turned his attention back to the Marquis raising his chin just a fraction of an inch at the mention.

As the oldest of the surviving Catalonia children, he held an immense amount of pride in his family's legacy.

The Catalonia men, deprived of a hereditary title after their ancestors had been driven out of their native Barcelona, had been forced to find a way to distinguish themselves early on and for centuries had been doing so through serving with distinction in every European and world war since the time of Elizabeth I of England.

There service record in this war would be no different.

Ferdinand's father, Leonardo, had been a general made famous as a founding Alliance member who had distinguished himself in his youth through fighting and winning decisive battles between the quarreling nations of what was then, Europe. Though he had retired from injuries sustained in his 'glory days', Leonardo had hardly lived long enough to sire a family, dying when Ferdinand was just twelve and his two brothers were only children, followed shortly after by their ill mother.

Swallowing, Ferdinand ran a hand distractedly through his thick black hair as he watched a soldier, a recruit no older than twelve stumble on the rope wall, and remembered how it had felt when he had done it for the first time sixteen years earlier.

Smiling to himself, he chuckled at the memory. He had landed face first in the mud somehow looping his foot in the rope rigging in the process so that he was hanging from one leg. Instructor Montalembert had not been so cordial to him in those days as he was being now.

They had raised one another, his brothers and himself.

The three of them who had survived childhood had depended upon one another when there was no one else willing to take them in and they had grown into the men they were today of their own convictions, each pushing the other to excel.

First, he had been promoted to general and then Arthur and one day soon, it would be Victor. Ferdinand was sure of it.

And then perhaps he could retire….

Ferdinand was ever much a military man as any Catalonia, but it is no secret that war takes its toll after a while.

It could wound the human soul and sometimes even kill it.

Ferdinand knew his brothers. Arthur was too much a man of action to ever retire from active duty, no matter how much his French wife prompted him to and Victor would follow wherever he led, but Ferdinand was not like them.

He had started out as a recruit with a strong propensity for war, however, the years had worn down his naïve romanticism into the gritty realism of what combat was actually like and Ferdinand wanted no more of it than he had to see.

He had left his dear Sara and his young children in Reims and that was where he intended to retire at the war's end.

"Why did you come to Amiens, General?"

Ferdinand turned back to find Montalembert giving him a hard stare behind an seemingly inquisitive look.

"I was called here by General Burke, sir. He has yet to detail why."

"Ah, I have a few guesses." Montalembert's mouth turned up in a knowing smirk. "You see General, many of our most able bodied and experienced instructors have been called out to serve under General Septum in space and as such we have been more than lacking in that department here on the home front."

Ferdinand did not like where this was going. He shifted uncomfortably in the saddle, trying to adjust his weight. It was not his idea to come to this field on horseback.

"The Foundation have their hands into everything and it is very important to them that we have new leadership so to speak, at least on the training front. Young, strong, men such as yourself who have become accomplished pilots and able bodied commanders to lead discipline the green horns being recruited in the cities and countryside."

Ferdinand tried not to let too much of it show, but a steady stream of anger was growing in him.

Had they just brought him here to be a glorified babysitter?!

He'd been in Amiens for a week already, couldn't they have told him earlier so he could have asked for reassignment before it was too late?!

Typical God Damned HQ red tape…

The idiots. Those dirty, underhanded, ingrates…

Ferdinand startled a bit as Montalembert slapped him heftily on the back.

"Poor lad." The old man chuckled, not in the least bit sorry for him. "Well, take a good luck. They're your men now."

Ferdinand's jaw tightened as he caught sight of the same young recruit snagging his bootleg on an undertow of barbed wire. Gritting his teeth he grimaced, not feeling the same type of the empathy towards the young man he had before.

"Ah, General, meet your new chief of staff here on base, Lieutenant Flanders."

Montalembert gestured towards a young man who couldn't have been older than sixteen tottering towards them on a red sorrel pony, bouncing from side to side in the saddle with no real balance.

How had that scrawny runt made lieutenant so young? Before the gaunt lieutenant reached them, however, he showed his full measure of his horsemanship as he slid off of the slowly moving animal on one side.

What sort of joke was this?

Wait…

"General Montalembert, are you absolutely certain this is why I was called here today?" Ferdinand asked, his overly strict tone leaving no room for error. "I can call the dispatch office, I would be happy to, to confirm my orders."

No alternative motive there…

"Nonsense, my boy, it's not needed. I can't see any other reason." Montalembert returned with the cattiest of smiles Ferdinand had ever seen on any man. "I am being called back to Brussels permanently in a few days time and in my stead, I am sure they could use the help. Take it all in, General, here is your nice quiet assignment. Certainly, beats a desk job."

Ferdinand swallowed and looked down to where his Lieutenant was picking him up off the ground and trying to pull his horse's head up from where it was grazing uncaringly on the green grass with the reins.

This was definitely not what he had signed on for…

When the Lieutenant Flanders had finally remounted and rode up to Ferdinand's side, he paid no attention to his timid excuse for a salute, and leaned in close to him.

"My first act is to get rid of these damn horses." Ferdinand said under his breath when Montalembert was not looking.

"Sir?" The timid lieutenant looked almost hopeful.

"Men don't need statues, they need commanders."

Montalembert turned back to him at the hushed voices, but did not comment on them.

"Well, what do you think, son? Are you ready to take over?"

Ferdinand smiled a stiff smile that did not reach his eyes, "As ready as I will ever be, sir."

* * *

"Shoulder Arms!"

"Present Arms!"

It was dawn in Calais, the morning after the uprising against Forte de Crecy and it was still early.

The rise of oranges, pinks, and purples had barely ascended above the shoreline when the lines of recruits, fully uniformed in their dress attire for the special occasion, had marched out of the main barracks carrying long distance rifles.

Lieutenant Halevy too was fully attired as he stood, his shoulders back, chest thrust forward as his short breaths crystallized into visibility as it collided with the frigid morning air.

With Colonel Auber's sudden departure to Dunkirk that morning, Lt. Halevy had been left most senior officer at the base and so it was up to him to carry out the executions of the prisoners they had captured the previous night.

And he was in the process of trying to convince himself that he could do this.

He had almost succeeded…almost.

The prisoners had all been tied to posts at the far end of the shooting range after the uprising and had been left there to stand all night in the pre-winter temperatures until dawn.

Now, the reckoning was here…and the soldiers were ready for it.

Halevy stepped forward. His men had come out promptly, each one choosing to look his absolute best for the event. Looking out across the lines, he recognized many of the faces of the men present and also recognized many of the faces of those who were not and knew they had taken more causalities than they had initially thought, though these were the men Auber had asked for.

Men who had lost a friend, a companion, or a relative. Men who had nothing left to lose and who were eager to get even.

An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a life for a life, it was all fair game and they were about to make a sport of it…sort of like hunting.

The look in the lieutenant's eyes hardened.

Well, the traitors would get what was coming to them then. It was only fair.

Standing taller, Willem Halevy looked out at the long green line and then across the field to where the bedraggled hodgepodge of civilian men had been tied to the stakes. He cleared his throat loudly and then began.

"Fire!"

There was a dulled moist sound as bullets passed through flesh for the first time and Halevy found he could barely recognize his own voice anymore as it shouted orders.

"Fire!"

During the pauses which ensured between shouts, the sounds of gunfire drowned out any other noises made so the echoes of bullets entering and exiting living tissue was spared from all ears…though not from the eyes.

"Fire!"

_Non, je ne regrette rien. _

Somewhere in Halevy's memory one of his mother's old records was playing.

Henrietta Halevy had been a cabaret singer and many of her songs were those which other French artists, such as Edith Piaf, Daniele Dupre, and Mylene Farmer, had made famous during their legendary careers. His mother had never written or performed a song of her own during her lifetime and all that time, he had never once thought it odd.

Until now.

"Stop, reload!"

In her dwindling years, while she had been dying, his mother used to make the nurse they had hired for her, play old records for her every hour of every day so she could the old songs she used to sing at various nightclubs around Paris and Marseille being performed by the artist who brought them to the public before she did.

The artists who made those songs memorable, not her.

"Present arms!"

_Non, Rien de Rien, Non, Je ne regrette rien_

"Fire !"

_Ni le bien qu'on m'a fait, ni le mal_

He could almost hear her voice as it ricocheted off of the walls of his mind, so loud now that it was the gun shots he could no longer hear ringing in his ears.

_Non, Rien de Rien, non, je ne regrette rien_

"Fire!"

_C'est paye, balaye, oublie, Je me fous de passe…_

When the last man stopped jerking the line of men had stopped firing, not wanting to waste any more ammunition than they had to, though many of them were not and never be satisfied with the small chance at vengeance they had been given.

Halevy swallowed as the tune in his head faded after it had reached its last verse and the ringing in his ears had begun.

"Lieutenant."

Someone was calling him but he couldn't hear them, not anymore, just the ringing. There was nothing else but the ringing. He was blind and deaf to everything else, even to the feeling of cold steel in his hand as he reached for the side holster at his belt for his pistol and raised the handgun towards his own head.

"Lieutenant !"

_Non, __Rien de Rien… _

One of the soldiers who had not put down his gun after the execution, noticed a small bundle of dandelions gathered in a patch of offensive yellow just in front of one of the stakes at the other end of the killing field.

The thought came to him, how the little flowers, so far away and so obscure, looked almost thirsty and he smiled as he raised his rifle to his shoulder; firing one final shot into the corpse tied to the stake above them.

* * *

"Damn them all, I have been had, Arthur!"

Ferdinand Catalonia griped over the vidline.

"Oh?" The amused owner of the voice on the other side of the line did not even try to hide his laughter. "Did Sara come down to the base last night and over do it on you or what?"

"Very funny." Ferdinand grumbled in a tone that denoted he was thinking anything but about the last offending statement. "I asked for a 'quiet command' and they gave me quiet alright, it's hell in a shoebox without air holes."

Ferdinand stood in his office, pacing back and forth as he complained to his brother who was not so quietly laughing at him by this point.

He had regretfully confirmed his orders with General Burke and had been given an office for his exclusive use, small gray hole in the wall with a desk and a few bare spots where plaques of honor used to proudly display the efforts of lesser officers.

The blonde man was sitting with his bare feet up on the desk of his study at his family home, where he was on leave for the month, wearing a pair of sweats and a argyle sweater covering is upper half. If anything, Arthur Catalonia had never been a fashion astute man and he knew it.

"I don't know what to tell you, Ferdinand." Arthur said with a shrug of his shoulders. "The longer Septum is out chasing tails in space, the longer we'll all be on dead end assignments. Pray for the day someone is given a two rank promotion above him. Maybe it will be you."

"Not at this rate." Ferdinand grumbled under his breath, but his demeanor soon took a lighter turn. "How's that _French_ wife of yours?"

Arthur sighed and just about rolled his eyes at the teasing drawl leveled on the word. Why was this always a point of amusement for his brother to draw on? "Sara is from Toulouse so I don't know why you are always going on and on about _my_ French wife when you have one yourself."

Ferdinand cleared his throat at the unexpected jab, but recovered quickly with a revitalized smirk. "Not that type of French. Dermail French is a completely different brand of the natural breed entirely; they're almost their own species, really…"

"Ferdinand."

At the verbal warning, Ferdinand's leer raised a fraction of an inch at the verbal victory he knew to be his, but he kept the rest of his comments to himself. "How are Christina and your little girl doing these days?"

"Dorothy is out grocery shopping with her grandmother and Christina is still in bed."

"Tired her out that much last night did you?"

"Not quite." Arthur displaced his brother's good humored comment quite easily with an off handed smile. "Apparently, it's a well known fact that three year olds are high energy."

"Ah, that sort of tired. Don't worry, it only gets better from here on in. Just wait until she's five and wants to crawl into your bed every night." Ferdinand chuckled, remembering those days with his own son and daughter, rubbing his eyes at the renewed sense of morning fatigue the memory reawakened in him. "I think if every married couple were warned about that particular aspect of parenthood before the fact, no one would ever have children voluntarily."

"Amen." Arthur twirled the band of white gold around his ring finger with the side of his thumb absentmindedly. "However, they do have their good points, children I mean. Honestly, I can't imagine what our lives would be like without Dorothy. She just has so much love and energy."

Ferdinand snorted at the sappy turn their conversation had taken, but nodded his head in agreement. As tedious as they could be, he loved his children and he had to admit that his life would be pretty dull without the frequent calls from home in which his son and daughter all but attacked the vidphone to hear from him.

"Alright, I'm done complaining." Ferdinand leaned over his desk as the man on the screen looked up at him in confusion. "Go, hop into bed with your wife and give her a real reason to be tired before someone else comes home first."

With that said, Ferdinand Catalonia disconnected the line before his brother could decide he had anything else to add.

* * *

_From the tears which bleed into the carpet's threads,_

_I cry to thee: Drop thy sword, thy spear, thy shield,_

_I Beg thee, noble love, stop and rest;_

_And return to a much fairer field._

_You say not to worry for you,_

_But my poor heart is too far gone,_

_And those whose beginning days are years away;_

_Kneel and pray for your safety too long. _

_Beloved husband, soldier dear,_

_Will the boatman have your soul today?_

_These cruel days mock me with the loss of you, _

_For the able mistress Death, I fear will have you leave me too._

_But, darling dear, I care not so long as you be at peace, safe and near._

_Tuck thee, sweetheart, into sleep,_

_I lay thee down, rescind thee my memory to keep;_

_Be not thyself, escape from here, this cursed netherworld._

_Take thy comfort in simple pleasures, in places I cannot bear to see._

_Sing to our children of their gallant father's triumphant return._

_Tell of far away lands, the bedtime stories of great heroes, monsters, and naves, _

_Of all those things thought once true, but have never been;_

_Children go to their beds like soldiers to their graves…_

One tear dropped onto the creased vellum surface of the dog eared page of the open book in the queen's lap she had been reading from only moments before, turning the small damp circlet on the aging paper a slightly darker hue of yellow than it had been before the salty water hit it.

Katrina Peacecraft took a deep breath in an attempt to abate the light sobs that were beginning to ripple through her delicate frame as the tears slid down her cheeks.

The pages of the old poetry book shook before her eyes, quivering under own its light weight being held in her unsteady hands.

Stifling another inevitable sob, she closed her eyes.

Her poor dear brother…

"_His driver said he found him in the garden. Whoever had him attacked, had left him alone there to die. We have reason to believe that the Alliance officials who planned the meeting had been plotting to assassinate our ambassador all along. There was never a plan for any real peace talks. It was all a rouse. I am so sorry, your majesty." _

Edward.

Katrina pulled a large frame off of a nearby shelf. Inside of it was a lengthwise picture taken of the queen and her husband. In Katrina's arms, she held a three year old Milliardo, cradling him softly against her shoulder. Next to her stood her usually austere looking husband with a smile on his face and next to him, with even less formality than he usually held, the 2nd Duke Icely was standing sideways towards the camera and laughing with his two year old son, Edmund in his arms.

What had he asked to be defiled in such a way as he had? What had he done to deserve his cruel fate? Her brother, the always kind, philanthropic duke who almost always put his country before himself.

A swift knock came on the door and without even asking permission, Mrs. Nada entered carrying a tray of food.

"It's just me, dear." The elder lady smiled, walking over to set her tray down on a table at the foot of the bed.

"Take that back to the kitchen, Nada, I'm not hungry right now."

"But, my lady, you haven't eaten all day. The king sent me with this tray and told me not to leave you until you've finished everything on it."

"Like a child…" Katrina chided her husband under her breath, but they were not words said in anger.

She knew she had worried the poor man when she had refused to come out of her bed the first day. Even she was willing to admit that this growingly uncharacteristic behavior was a little excessive, but she didn't know how else to react. When she had lost her parents, they had been young, but she had had Edward to hold her up, to help her through it all.

Now he was gone. Where did that leave her?

She loved her husband and children, but they could not take the place of any of the people she had lost. She was the only one left out of her entire natural family now. She had out lived them. At twenty seven years old, Katrina Peacecraft had outlived all of her natural relatives.

How did someone cope with such a thing? How could a soul ever get used to being the last of their line?

It would take a strong person to do that and as Katrina mentally filled in the gaps, she knew she just wasn't that strong.

"Please, my lady." Nada, noticing her pallor as the queen had drifted back into her own thoughts, had come to sit next to her, looking at her worriedly. "You need to keep up your strength, dear."

There was a measured silence as the queen refused to reply. Then, Nada unexpectedly sighed and turned away from her.

"You know, my own brother was killed in Scotland when the Alliance forces took the Great Island in the early 60s" The older woman didn't look at the queen as she talked so she had no way of seeing the dumfounded expression the younger of the two wore quickly turning into a purely sympathetic one. "His name was Edward too. I used to call him Ward back when we were young enough to play in our neighbor's unplanted fields without getting into trouble and in the wild briars throughout Falkirk where we spent out childhood together."

Then Nada turned to face Katrina and the other was astonished to see tears in the lady's speckled hazel eyes.

Not in all of the years they had lived in the palace, had the queen ever seen Mrs. Nada of her husband cry in public, not even when the news arrived that their youngest daughter had suddenly died of tuberculosis; not even then did they lose their public faces. But here, this dignified woman, who had served in numerous countries all over Europe and served kings and queens the world over, was shedding tears for a long ago hurt all over again.

And it broke Katrina's heart to see it.

To see this strong woman broken and completely vulnerable in her remembered pain….it was almost too much.

"Mrs. Nada." The queen reached out and grasped the older woman's hand apologetically. "I'm sorry, I did not mean to reawaken these painful memories in you."

"Oh, it's not your fault, dear." Nada was quick to pat the top of the queen's hand in hers in a reassuring gesture. "You are only coping with the loss of your brother in the only way you can, by showing it. It is not a crime, it's natural. Besides, wearing your heart on your sleeve is a trait you are known for, am I right highness?"

Katrina nodded, a little smile curving her lips upwards as she tried to keep back a fresh row of tears, this time from joy and gratitude that she had been able to keep this fine woman at her side all of these years. There was a reason she had employed her on their staff after first taking notice of her again at the house of the, then, Duke Khushrenada.

"Growing up in my Grandmother Visby's home served as quite the education for you, didn't it?"

Nada snorted, she knew this woman before, had spent some time in her family's employ when she was young watching the entire lot of them grow.

First, the queen's mother and second Katrina herself and though watching people develop through the generations was not something she would like to trade for anything else, the estate on Visby where Nada had been sent by her father to work was not one of her fonder homes.

How could it have been?

She had been only twelve when her father had arranged it all and it had been the first time she had ever left her family's home in Falkirk. Sweden, let alone the city of Visby and its island home, had seemed like an entire world away and it had been.

Quite often, Nada had heard the career oriented men she had worked for throughout the years talk about their jobs and how efficient it had been to hit the ground running and though Nada, knew what they meant, she couldn't agree with them when lining that sentiment up with her own personal experiences.

It had been a shock, to say the least. She had gone from a home where she was used to doing most of the chores to being one in thirty maids in a household under the command, of not a loving mother, but an indifferent and strict matron who made sure everything was done just so and could mead out punishment when it wasn't .

Nada's first real employment experience could hardly compare to moping the floors or cooking for eight children in their moderate farm house back in Scotland.

The two just weren't in the same category. She had been forced to wipe her slate clean. From day one, young Nada was relearning how to do things that had become second nature to her over the years, simple household things such as turning down a bed or dusting a book without driving the dust into the pages and ruining the finish on the sides of the older or more expensive editions.

It had been an experience and unfortunately for her, the majority of her education was garnered at the hands of the then Lady Visby, Katrina's grandmother.

The Lady, who was never above supervising her matron and her staff in their work, seemed to hover wherever Nada was, always correcting what she was doing and once the mistake was brought to the attention of Matron Munk (for she was always present, hovering as well) there was no way for her to escape punishment.

And Matron Munk seemed to enjoy punishing her above many of the others. Looking back on it now, Nada could come to several different conclusions as to why that had been true back then.

In addition to being a sadist (all of the girls on the house staff swore by that fact), Matron Munk was also English, from somewhere in Suffolk they'd heard, and Nada was sure the fact she was native born and bred Scottish hadn't worked in her favor at all.

Oh, how Nada had hated that woman.

There was instance in particular where the matron was concerned, that still made smoke come out of Nada's ears fifty years later.

In the same year she had arrived at the household, the Lady Visby had noticed that she had drawn the curtains the wrong way one late afternoon and had, of course, commented on it. In punishment, Matron Munk had ordered her to mop the hard wood floors of the main ballroom, the largest room in the main house, alone with little more than a rag and a bucket full of suds.

It had been a horrible night. The next day her hands had been so calloused and sore that it made every task she had that much harder to do. It had taken two weeks before her hands had healed properly.

Thank god that wretched woman had drank herself to death.

So, yes, working for the Lady Visby had been quite the education indeed.

"Mrs. Nada." Katrina was looking at her sincerely now and not without a good amount of concern. "I was only kidding. Mama told me how hard you used to have it in that house. She always spoke very highly of you, my mother. Until the day she died, she considered you one of her dearest friends."

Nada nodded. In the five years she had spent at the estate in Visby, she had only ever heard or received kind words from the eldest daughter of the house, Elizabeth, who had been within a few years of her own age. Though Nada had eventually been called home again, she had never lost contact with the future Duchess Icely. The two had exchanged letters reverently, each telling the other about their lives up until the week the great lady had succumbed to her illness.

When Nada had met Otto and one day married him, Elizabeth Visby had been the first one to know about it. Naturally, the good lady wrote back and often she would write about her children and how their characters were progressing with the years.

Whether or not the Icely children knew it or not, their mother had loved them very much. She just had no way of recovering after being beset by so deadly a foe as tuberculosis.

"Your mother was a very great lady." Nada began, a soft smile gracing her middle aged features. "Much like yourself."

"Thank you." The queen retained her composure well as a light blush came at the unexpected compliment. "We were so young when Mama died, I often find myself wondering if she would have been proud of us."

Katrina's smile fell as she thought of her sickly mother, so pale and fragile laying propped up on the pillows in her bed, barely breathing and coughing in violent spasms when she did.

And memories of the private nurses who quarantined her children from her room most of the time and the bowls of cold water they brought in to swab her brow when it grew hot.

By the end of most days, those bowls of cool water would be dry and hung loose with bloody handkerchiefs.

These rituals renewed themselves, day in and day out, week after week, month after month until the day the Lady Elizabeth finally took her last breath.

Katrina could remember the smell of her mother's room, no longer perfumed with rose water and lily powder as she first remembered it, but overtaken, diluted with the tartness of antibiotics and sterile rubber gloves.

After the funeral, no one ever went into that room again. It was too much for all of them, especially their father.

For years afterward, both Edward and Katrina would maintain that their mother's death had been the casual factor leading their father's slip in health a few short years later and his eventual death.

He just lost the will to live.

"It was unfair what happened to her." Katrina's voice was soft, almost inaudible when she finally spoke out loud. "She was only one year my junior when she died, Nada, she wasn't old enough to go yet."

"Most of us aren't, dear, but then, who decides when is old enough? Life runs its course in different measures for everyone. Some people, young and vital, suddenly die." Nada drew in a steadying breath as her daughter's face flashed in the back of her mind, but she did not let it distract her from her conversation with the young queen. "Some don't die until they've lived a long, full life. One's lifespan is not a fair measure of who they were. My point is, death is a natural part of life and we can't anticipate it. Our lives are so short in the first place and then it is left up to us to outlive everyone and everything we care about. We're not supposed to feel alright with it. Your mother would have been proud of you, like your brother was. She was a woman who grabbed life by the hair and dragged it along for the ride, not the other way around like most woman of her station. Oh, she knew how to behave like the obedient, docile creature everyone expected her to be when she was in public, but whenever she could get away, she would raise hell. It's a shame you didn't get the chance to know her that well."

Katrina looked down at her hands where they rested in her lap after she had let Nada's go.

"Edward knew her better." Katrina ventured, stumbling over the few words before finally being able to say them clearly. "He seemed to always know everything better than I did."

"Elizabeth used to write to me about you the three of you." Nada looked down at the quilted burgundy bedspread beneath her, finding the hexagon shapes bordered with thread of the same color somehow interesting. "You, Edward, and Monique. Have you tried contacting your sister in England?"

Katrina grimaced. Her younger sister had always been different, though she loved her, Monique had never been happy in their family, always seeking a way out of it, to far away places and away from those who cared the most for her. She had seized the opportunity when it came and married an English diplomat. Then she moved off the continent and Katrina had not heard from her since.

Edward had been writing to her periodically over the years, but Monique had refused to write him back, almost as if she were glad to be rid of them.

Rid of their father.

Rid of their mother.

And rid of she and Edward and their children, not wasting the effort to know her nieces and nephews in any way.

Monique Icely, now de Laurence, had effectively rid herself of her entire life before going abroad and she had no wish to ever encounter it again.

"No." Katrina looked down at the diamond glittering in the wedding band on her finger as it caught the light from one of the open windows. "Good riddance too."

"Oh, no, dear, you don't mean that." Nada reached out and patted the girl's hand, but she pulled it away quickly, like she had been burned.

"Monique is no more my sister than she ever thought me hers." The look in Katrina's eyes was hard, but not final telling more of what she really felt than she would be willing to figure out. "She turned her back on this family when she left it and me along with it."

"Katrina, she is your sister." Nada pleaded with her. "Dear, we have to learn to forgive and let live. Life's just too short."

The queen sighed, conceding slightly, but not completely.

Nada was right, but the hurt feelings she had against her sister were just as righteous, just as true.

"When she is ready, if she ever is, I will be here."

Giving her a motherly look, Nada patted Katrina's hand which had moved to the bedspread top, this time reaching for it and holding it to ensure the girl would not pull it away.

"Good girl. Now, let's eat something shall we?"

* * *

Pain—has an Element of Blank—

It cannot recollect

When it begun—or if there were

A time when it was not—

It has no Future—but itself—

Its Infinite contain

Its Past—enlightened to perceive

New Periods—of Pain.

-Emily Dickinson-

(1830-1886)

A/N: Well after such a sobering note, it is sort of hard to continue in a positive motion, but I would like to take this time to dedicate this chapter in its entirety to my good friend Isis cw. Thank you for all of the help, hope, and inspiration you have given me over the years through your writings and tireless work ethic, you rock Lady! Also as a side note, I have to set the record straight on this. The Forte de Laclos does exist, but not in France. However, I placed it there because of the proximity to other relevant places in the plot line. I figured it would make more sense that way. Thanks for reading and I hope everyone enjoyed this chapter!! :)


	3. Another Troy

Chapter Three: Another Troy

AC 181

Dunkirk, Northern France

Colonel Auber's jeep pulled up to the city council building and parked in the street, running over the road side in the process and settling the vehicle at an odd, but non-dangerous angle.

During carnival season, the city streets used to be filled to the brim with _chahuts_, crowds of people dancing and huddling about to keep warm as music played over the houses and through the alleyways. But since the Alliance had subdued northern France in AC 170, the carnival had been outlawed as it was seen as too much of a risk to the new order. The citizens had protested at first, but the first rally had ended with five civilians dead and nothing else accomplished.

The national government of France, as it had been then only a central figurehead, had petitioned the military to reconsider the situation, but two chief council members had ended up dying mysterious death instead and the controversy over the carnival in Dunkirk had ended there.

The marketplace was still an open one. The first Alliance leaders had tried to station guards all over the premise, but the locals had taken to buying fruit just so they could throw it at them and so the latter leaders had given up securing the area completely (though there were constantly manned security garrisons on either side of the _Le Marché de Natural_).

And despite the constant military oppression of the people by their Alliance rulers, the French people had not lost their spirit nor relinquished their traditions (even after some of them were outlawed).

_Which is precisely why places like this should be razed to the ground first._

Whatever his conqueror's philosophy, Colonel Auber reminded himself that it was not the reason he had been called here today, however he wished it would have been.

Banishing that thought to the back of his mind, Xavier Auber bounded up the steps to the Town Hall, his ward officer struggling to keep up with his brisk pace. For some reason, the colonel had more faith in the recruits within his own regiment than his own commissioned officers, so he had chosen a young man at random from the group he had encountered the night before and had made him his a cadet officer.

He had needed a man who he could test the limits to, someone who he would be able to train to be loyal to him, not an officer who had been trained by someone else like Halevy or Grafton.

Someone who would be loyal to him; someone who could warn the colonel to threats being made towards him within the Alliance and who could also take care of those threats, discretely of course.

Xavier Auber had yet to know the limits of this particular ward, but he was determined to find out where his loyalties lay soon enough.

When he reached the top of the stoop, the iron doors were opened for him, introducing Auber to the columned receiving chamber. A middle aged man stood in the center of the foyer, his arms at his sides though he was as ease and did not come to attention when the colonel entered the room.

Auber, impatient, moved to sidestep the elder man, but the other stopped him with his words.

"Colonel Auber, I presume."

How he hated these little shows put on for civilian benefit.

"Yes, what is it?"

"The mayor has been expecting you."

Auber stepped back and readjusted his stance, lifting his chin momentarily just enough for it to be above that of the man he was speaking to.

A local man, with the accent to prove it…a local man with an overly smug smile.

Auber detested these people. The sooner they could do away with them the better.

"Why have I come?" He asked tilting his head to the side and narrowing his eyes accusingly.

"As I said the mayor is expecting you." The smug smile on the man's face widened and the sparkle in his eyes got brighter, tipping Auber off even more so that something really was rotten with the whole situation. "It you will please follow me—"

Auber bristled at that. He turned briefly towards his ward officer and the cadet casually moved his hand to where his pistol holster rested at his him, reaching down and soundlessly undoing the brass button that connected leather protectively over steel.

Spinning back, Auber stared the elder man down though he didn't seem to see the twenty year old colonel as much of a threat.

He was just a boy, just a stupid motherless boy from Paris, the son of a whore and a drunkard….

Xavier set his jaw and lowered his head, that sentence finishing itself off in his head. This grey haired attaché with his expensive suit and his silk tie had no right to judge him and he was, everyone always did.

He would fix that.

Auber stepped up to the surprised man and stuck his finger into his chest.

"Enough! Listen, idiot, I am not going any farther unless you tell me where I am going and why." With his other hand, Xavier grabbed onto the man's collar, stopping him from backing away. "Now, tell me."

"The mayor has requested your presence at the behest of Monsieur Banzhaf, he would not say why."

Auber increased pressure against the man's neck as he lifted him up by his collar.

"Who are you?"

The smug smile disappeared and the man was visibly shaken. "Albert Gassion, I'm Albert Gassion."

Gassion? Where did he know that name from?

Pulling the man closer so that they were almost nose to nose, Auber looked into his eyes, scanning them for any hint of recognition.

Eyes a rich blue-brown that hated him almost as much as Xavier did them.

Gassion….Gassion, ah yes, that boy...

Jacques Gassion had been a former young man of the city around Auber's age. One of the many who had not passively accepted the Alliance take over of the region.

Xavier remembered him specifically.

Xavier had been a cadet when they took this part of France ten years ago and Jacques Gassion had been his first kill. He had shot him in the head and could vividly remember having the pleasure of watching the light fade from his eyes at close range.

Eyes the same color as the ones he was staring into.

He understood, mon Dieu, Xavier understood now, just how funny the truth really was when it was spelled out in someone else's eyes.

Having successfully turned the tables on his snobbish little attaché, the colonel smiled and pushed the diplomat back roughly on his heels.

"Lead the way then, Albert Gassion. Let's not keep the mayor waiting any longer."

As Gassion turned his back to him hurriedly, Xavier glanced at his cadet officer and the younger man dropped his hand from the leather holster where it had been resting, not bothering to redo the button.

----

Christina Dermail lay sprawled across her bed, dead asleep with her legs wrapped tightly in the sheets like the plaster cast of a renaissance statue. Her breathing was even and her relaxed pose, as graceful as she made every one she was ever in seem to be, gave the dark haired woman the disposition of some sort of divine creature and, for his part, Arthur could agree with that.

He sat in a chair across from the bed, near one of the open windows watching the shadows play over her face.

He adored being able to see her at peace.

Whenever Arthur was away, he tried to picture his wife like this, an angel in the sunlight none the less bereft of just how wonderful she really was.

Always, peaceful, always divine…in sleep that was.

Arthur stood stuffing his hands in his pockets as he walked over to sit softly on the bed…or at least he thought he had sat down softly. Apparently the bedsprings were a little less forgiving these days than they had been when the two were a newly married couple.

General Catalonia, known for his fearless charges into hostile foreign territory, grimaced and closed his eyes as the mattress dipped and creaked unavoidably beneath him.

Uh oh…

Guiltily, Arthur sighed and opened his eyes immediately noticing his now very awake wife glaring at him as if expecting an explanation as to why her few quiet hours of sleep were being cut short on a weekday.

Arthur swallowed and bowed his head sheepishly, a smug smile appearing on his face, betraying him.

"Sorry."

Christina squinted her cornflower blue eyes at him, not really appreciating the open drapes this early in the morning. "You should be. It's the first good night's sleep I've had in weeks."

Arthur leaned down towards her on his elbows, as she tried to block both him and the glare of sunlight streaming in through the windows out by using her forearm to cover her eyes.

"You can't blame me for all of that."

"Not all of it, no." Then she lifted her arm just enough resume her mock glare at him from underneath it. "But most of it."

Arthur chuckled good naturedly as he reached up to wisp away a stray lock of Christina's dark hair from her forehead and pushed it behind her ear.

How he loved her. Arthur leaned down and propped his head up on his elbow so that he was just above her, looking down into her eyes comfortably.

"Guess who I just got off the phone with?"

"Hmm….let me guess, now, don't tell me." Christina made a display of pretending to actually think about who the man could be when she knew perfectly well who it was. "Is he about 5'9" with black hair and an ill temper who, despite six years of marriage to you, still calls me the 'French wife' even though his own is from Toulouse?"

Arthur chuckled at the description.

"The very one." He said.

Christina scoffed as she rolled her eyes up at her husband, "The hypocrite…"

Despite everything and anything Arthur Catalonia had been able to do to discourage tthe two for the past few years, his wife and brother still enjoyed picking on one another with a predictable vehemence that made the current war they were in look like little more than a lover's spat. Thinking on it, Arthur had chalked it all down to the fact that his wife was a severely stubborn and independent woman and that his brother, being the oldest among them who had basically raised he and Victor, was also both of those things to the maximum making the combination of the two something in between uranium and crude oil.

Something that was dangerous and sure to light up the night with fire sooner rather than later.

"He sends his regards."

"Oh I bet he does." Christina narrowed her eyes suspiciously up at him, "They came complete with a poison apple for me too right? I bet he can't wait for that day to come."

Arthur shook his head at her, but couldn't keep the smile off of his face. "You're never going to let that joke slide are you?"

"No!" Christina sprouted at him and he had to laugh at her suddenly undignified demeanor. " 'May this kill off the witch in your life and give you back instead a princess, if at all possible, a little less French….' The bloody man should have known better."

Arthur leaned back from her as he tried to bit back another laugh. "Honestly Christina, he doesn't mean anything by it, he's just having a little bit of fun because he knows it eats at you."

"I'll get even yet." She looked away from him as an evil little grin lit up her features in a way he had come to somewhat like and be apprehensive of at the same time. "We'll see how he feels when he receives an anonymous package in the mail containing a truss at his new military base. I'm sure that would improve his relationship with his fellow officers."

"Christina!"

"What? You know he has been asking for it for years with this whole 'French wife' business? Six years is just a little much don't you think?"

Arthur bent to kiss her cheek as she grudgingly relinquished her angry feelings with a frustrated, the show of affection he was giving her relaxing her some.

"I think that you're far too beautiful to let any of this bother you, for the time being at least."

A catty smile set itself over Christina's features as she draped her arms slowly around her husband's neck and stared into his eyes, "And what would you recommend I do instead?"

When Arthur looked down into her eyes, there was no question in his. "Kiss me."

A full laugh erupted at her and Arthur narrowed his eyes unappreciatively, "I hadn't meant that as a joke."

"You're just such a romantic, General."

With that, Christina leaned up and kissed him, willing to hold him close to her and away from the rest of the world for as long as she could.

-----

Xavier Auber was livid, absolutely livid as he stormed out of the back entrance of the Dunkirk town hall and into the alleyway behind.

_Who in hell did these academy trained nitwits think they were sending him a half cooked second in command? Who in hell had decided to send him Halevy in the first place? _

Xavier wanted them raised up and nailed to a wall by their thumbs!

During his meeting with Albert Gassion and Dunkirk's plump mayor, a messenger had rushed in with a telegram from the base.

Apparently, Lt. Halevy had tried to commit suicide in plain daylight during the execution of the prisoners who had been captured last night in Calais and had just about succeeded. Unfortunately a few younger officers had managed to subdue him before he could pull the trigger and as of this morning, Halevy had been 'honorably' discharged to a mental hospital in Tours. Bloody man. Men like him should be weeded out from the rest and liquidated before they can infect the ranks, but every once in a while a few stragglers made it into qualified positions that they shouldn't have and that was when the trouble usually started.

Jacques Gassion had been one of those men, Xavier, had deduced from their quick encounter together and apparently so was the boy's father.

The stupid imbecile of a man. Did he actually think he had any power left? Xavier made a mental note to kill him sometime later, when no one was looking. It would give him something to do while he was still in town.

Leaning against one of the walls behind the town hall looking out towards the alleyways that resembled those he spent his childhood in, Colonel heard footsteps come up at a sedate pace behind him and chose not to startle. There was no need, he knew who it was.

His cadet officer stopped a few feet from him, relatively calm. When he spoke, his voice was composed and nothing less than professional. "How was the meeting, sir?"

"Tedious, what else is there to be had with these frivolous little men in suits?" Auber turned to look back at him, "We aspire to a higher ideal, Nigel. They and their petty institutions have nothing to offer us anymore. The only reason we keep this up is to give them the illusion that they still hold some sort of identity that hasn't been melted into the subterfuge, people will cooperate better when they think they still have a choice. That's what we want."

Nigel Neuilly, always stone faced in all the time he had worked under Auber's command, had always followed orders and never revealed what he was really thinking and that was what Auber wanted in a subordinate. Someone who could do the atrocious and knew better than to think they had committed the worst sin in all the world, who knew that humanity was outmatching his sins every day with its own.

Someone who realized that people and their sins were made obsolete by their own expendability.

"Cadet Neuilly, do you have another commission waiting for you after this one?"

"No, sir, I have not requested one yet."

"Don't." Auber's limitless gaze angled away from him and over to where a steady stream of muddy water was trickling down the old stones of the building across from them and disappearing into obscure lines of the street. "You've just been promoted to lieutenant. You'll be given new quarters when we return to base."

"Yes, sir."

And just like that, the vacancy for a staff lieutenant at Forte de Crecy had just been filled. _So much for Halevy_, Auber smiled as he pushed himself off of the wall of the building.

-----

The Khushrenada boys had retired to one of the various dens situated within the family apartments they were always given while staying with their father in the palace. It was only the two of them who occupied the room as was always the custom of the two boys to withdraw from the prying eyes of society when they had the rare opportunity to be in one another's company.

"_Tell all the Truth but tell it slant—_

_Success in Circuit lies_

_Too bright for our infirm Delight_

_The Truth's superb surprise_

_As Lightning to the Children eased_

_With Explanation kind_

_The Truth must dazzle gradually_

_Or every man be blind—"_

Treize stood near the central fireplace of the small study they occupied, holding an aged looking book in his hand, reading the words therein while hardly being distracted by his brother's droning monologue. The two boys may have been close, but their respect for one another had its limits.

"So we ended up somewhere in Prague, Lexi completely plastered and myself with a killer headache and my belt tied around my knees." Richard leaned back in his chair, lost in the fun little memories, making these huge gestures as he described everything that had happened to him on this vacation that had left Europe reeling and its respectable world. "Needless to say, Alexandrei Vivski and a good bottle of Bordeaux don't mix well…"

"_We never know how high we are _

_Till we are asked to rise_

_And then if we are true to plan_

_Our Statures touch the skies—"_

"…Now that was good. Coming up for air in Vienna was the best idea I've had in years, if I must say so myself, though Lexi did look a little green around the gills for the first week though…"

"_The Heroism we recite_

_Would be a normal thing_

_Did not ourselves the Cubits warp_

_For fear to be King—"_

"…It was like looking into the sun, Treize. You would have appreciated it too, had you been there, I believe."

Treize looked up from the old yellowing pages to the dancing flames licking the sautéed surface of the logs where most of the bark had already melted away. An ironic half smile caused the corner of his mouth to twitch up on one side.

No, whatever rubbish his brother was talking about the first half of his winter holiday, Treize was almost certain he would not have enjoyed it, for he and his brother very seldom agreed on what was and was not _appreciable_.

Two sides of a coin, the Khushrenada brothers. One newer, keeping a refined polish to its exterior never to be hidden, and the other was scratched, scared beyond the help of any well intentioned shining

"Are you married yet?"

Richard reclined at an odd angle in one of the ancient leather chairs surrounding the fireplace in an inclosing arena, one leg strung up over the armrest in an undignified and devil-may-care manner. At the offhanded question, he bent his head towards his brother and let it lull, similar blue eyes staring at him nonchalantly.

"Should I be?" Richard asked.

Treize snapped the book shut and turned his attention fully onto his brother, the ironic smile still in place.

"Father thinks so."

The older of the two huffed and threw a loose string from the upholstered chair he had pulled absently out of the offensive leather pattern into the fire, which hit the floor midflight instead.

"His thoughts are like grains of salt; small, inadequate, and very quickly tossed over your shoulder without worry." Richard glanced lazily up at the regale portrait of William Peacecraft II over the mantle and sighed, annoyed suddenly at the complete respect of decorum this small corner of the palace seemed to be flooded with. "Besides, when in your experience, has our father ever shown that his marriage has ever meant anything to him?"

Treize swallowed. It was a well known fact in higher social circles that Theodore Khushrenada, like many men of his wealth and position, was not faithful to his wife and he made no secret of it.

Even his children knew.

Treize himself had known for himself since his mother threw their maid, Becky, out of the nursery and accused her in front of him.

Though the Khushrenada children seemed to be ambivalent to all of their father's affairs, their mother, the Duchess Sophie-Bushon Khushrenada had never been a woman to take being second place lightly. Part of the problem lay with Theodore for that.

Being a Khushrenada, the Duke would not have a simpleminded, dear, singly obedient woman for a wife. He would have an heiress, a bullheaded siren who was not afraid to lead and actually invited bullying and patronizing of her own person by the highest social circles of debutants at their own detriment.

Treize chuckled at the thought. Oh, his mother was a proud woman, but she had every reason to be.

Sophie was a Bushon, or had been and theirs was one of the few remaining purely French families related closely to the Bourbon-Vendomes, the last ruling house of France. A fact Sophie would make good use of for her children, as even France's own Prince Rene was a godfather to both of her sons.

Outwardly, she was a blessed woman.

Treize's mother had often told him that she and her family had been ordained by God to be who they were. Though Treize did not believe this for himself, he could see how it could make some sense. After all, it had been a fantastic turn of events which had led to his mother's rise to power in the first place.

And none of them concerned his father.

Sophie's own father, Francois Henri Bushon, had been the third born son of the family and had not been expected to inherit his family's lands or title

However, his fate had been sealed for him after his oldest brother had married a beggar maid and sealed his own by being disinherited for it. Then the second brother, who would have taken over anyway, had been killed in a car crash in Paris just weeks before he was to be granted their ailing father's inheritance.

Not having been pinned down with the expectations of holding his family's future in his hands throughout his childhood, Francois decided to make the most of his inheritance. He had taken on a number of philanthropic enterprises as well as increasing his own investments, more than tripling his fortune and for it, his family had become prosperous and practically legendary.

Treize could see it every time he looked into his mother's eyes when they took on that wistful look to them. She was proud of her father, but she also missed him and her brothers and her mother. She missed her own family identity. In France, Sophie was a Bushon, a great lady with a celebrated name, anywhere's else in the world she was a Khushrenada and no one hailed her for that.

When it came to royal marriages, being the perfect wife meant you moved wherever your new husband's family was and bore him children to carry his name while at the same time becoming popular in the higher social circles to enhance the future prestige of your family. It was a hard task so much so that it was said a woman could either do it well or fold completely beneath the pressure of all of the expectations placed on her shoulders.

And being married to a Khushrenada made a wife's duties no easier.

Theodore was the 18th Duke Khushrenada. The 18th bearer of an ancient title and generation after generation of royal blood that had roots to the lineages of Ivan IV of Russia and Joseph II the Holy Roman Emperor. It was a family as old as her own and just as integral in this world's history. The Khushrenada family motto read like a track record of the duty which consumed each leading members' lives from the time they came of age to the day they died, 'To the world I am a servant, shall I do only all that is necessary to uphold her'. It had become a trademark of the Khushrenada family members, to uphold this motto no matter the adversity of their times against them and it had becomes a mark of the line to do this.

And then there was Theodore. To be married to him was a philanthropic enterprise of its own and it had been a shock to twenty one year old Sophie Anastasia Bushon.

And how had she been repaid?

With her husband's pathetic fallacy, his pitiable weakness to have every beautiful thing on two legs.

Or maybe four….there were rumors….

Treize swallowed and shook his head. What people wouldn't say…

It was the very reason why his mother spent all the more time with that wistful look in her eyes as the years passed by.

It was why people at court tossed their prestigious family name from corner to corner like a glop of glorified mud.

Treize turned towards his brother who now sat staring aimlessly into the fire.

It was also why the Duke's eldest son had decided to go away for his education instead of attending one of the closer colleges and also why he hated their father.

Richard was the oldest out of all of them and because of this he had reached his breaking point first. No longer could he stand to watch their proud mother fall into disrespect and her reputation fall into disrepair while their father's suffered no such fall that he would ever feel ashamed of.

It was a hard reality for all of the Khushrenada children to bear. Even the youngest, their only sister Pasha had a hard time dealing with it all as she spent the most time out of all of them with their mother everyday.

It just made them worry more for her and her well being, watching her slowly slip everyday.

So many years living here in a loveless marriage with their father had convinced Sophie that she was completely alone, so much so that she almost could not see her children anymore.

They were the invisible witnesses to everything that went on in that house because they had grown into Khushrenadas, a surrogate mutation that was not her own family even, but her husband's, with her husband's pedigree and his overzealous pride. Sophie, being the good wife, had raised them in his image, relinquishing all that she was for them and how had her children repaid her? They had become like _him_ and because of this fact she felt and openly showed that she did not believe her own children could understand her or everything that she had lost to give them this life.

It was for this very reason that Treize felt a great deal of ambivalence towards his father, however…the man was still his father no matter the way one looked at it and he could not, no, he would not ignore that fact.

It was beneath him.

His father was his father and he would always love him for it, but it would not resign himself, no, limit himself to a life of hatred and loathing. He would rise above it instead and create his own legacy to add to the prestige of the Khushrenada family, bring a new sort of glory to it.

And erase the tarnish of his father that was smothering it.

Treize cleared his throat and stared back into the fire. "He did love her once, maybe he still does", he tried.

Richard snorted indignantly, slumping farther, if it was possible, into the ancient chair. "If his lies were crowns our father would rule all of Europe by now, besides, an illegitimate lovechild is a fine way to show the woman in your life that you're madly devoted to her, is it not?"

Treize scowled and noticed the stalk of angry betrayal burning like a piece of kindling in his brother's eyes. It was true, their father had become a traitor to his family and his name and he knew it, he just didn't care at all.

Treize felt a stab of indignation rise up in him at the thought, but he ignored it. "Surely, Richard, the beginning of everything starts with an impulse from the heart."

Richard closed his eyes, leaning his head back against the plush leather cushions of his chair, he didn't even try to hide his reaction, he laughed out loud. After Treize's cheeks had colored in a humored tinge of embarrassment and Richard's laughter had subsided down into languished chuckles, the older of the two opened his eyes to mere slits and stared into the creamlike abyss of the ceiling.

"So young…" Richard muttered to himself.

Treize was confused as his attention rebounded back to his brother. "I'm sorry?"

Richard cleared his throat, preparing to better clarify what he meant. "You are so young, little brother, too young still for the times we live in. This is a time for hard men and ruthlessness and iron fists. You'll see soon. The outrage that has taken over our entire world is about to envelope us here as well. It's death, persona non grata, in motion. In a few months it won't matter if I'm married or not, those trivialities will cease to apply."

Treize stared at him incredulously for a long moment, but he knew Richard was right. Getting wasted was not the only thing he had been doing on his winter vacation. While traveling across central Europe, Richard had seen the bare truth laid out before him, had seen the Alliance troops swarm like so many bees upon a place and demolish it to a shadow of it's former self. And it would not take long before the swarm of locusts over took the Sac Kingdom like they had everywhere else.

But at the same time Treize realized this place was different from all the rest. The Sanc Kingdom was the last outpost of pacifism to remain standing directly in the face of Alliance tyranny after so many years of conflict and when it fell…it would become another Troy.

As he stared into the fire, Treize lost himself in the image of flame devouring wood.

----

Albert Gassion slipped quietly out of the town hall and into the sunset darkening the sky over the coast of northwestern France. Meetings held by the town's elderly council members were growing longer and more tedious as the days went by. Letting out a frustrated sigh, the man reached into his inside jacket pocket and pulled out an imported Cuban cigar. He ran the length of it under his nose, admiring the scent of the foreign tobacco before casually pulling a double guillotine style clipper from his other pocket, cutting the cap off, and then lighting it with a gold plated Zippo lighter.

With that done, Albert descended the steps and moved discretely to the alleyway beside the building, lest his cover for leaving the meeting early be completely blown.

"Damn Alliance thugs." Gassion let out the first puff of smoke as he leaned comfortably against the building's stone wall. "They get worse and worse as the years pass by."

"I'm sorry to hear you feel that way."

Startled, Albert turned on his heel to see Cadet Neuilly standing contraposto behind him, his cold stare boring into him.

"Now, listen here, son, you know better than I do what your people have done to this place." Albert felt the need to defend himself, nervousness creeping into his voice as he watched the young man's hand fidget on his belt near where his holster was situated. "Can you begrudge me my feelings on this entire situation? I have a right to be angry…especially after what your colonel did to my son."

A small smile crept onto Neuilly's face and Albert's heart sank in his chest.

"But haven't you heard, sir? All's fair in love and war."

"Now, young man, don't be hasty-"

But the holster cover was shrugged aside anyway and the sound of the gunshot rang through the alleyway, startling the few people on the evening streets, but it only took a few minutes before they went back to their lives again, none the worse for wear than they had been before they had heard it.

* * *

"Ever my hap is slack and slow in coming,

Desire increasing, ay my hope uncertain

With doubtful love, that but increaseth pain;

For, tiger like, so swift it is in parting.

Alas! The snow black shall it be and scalding,

The sea, waterless, and fish upon the mountain,

The Thames shall back return into its fountain,

And where he rose the sun shall take his lodging,

Ere I in this find peace or quietness;

Or that Love, or my Lady, right-wisely,

Leave to conspire against me wrongfully.

And if I have after such bitterness,

One drop of sweet, my mouth, is out of taste,

That all my trust and travail is but waste."

-Sir Thomas Wyatt-

(1503 – 1542)

"Why should I blame her that she filled my days

With misery, or that she would of late

Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,

Or hurled the little streets upon the great,

Had they but courage equal to desire?

What could have made her peaceful with a mind

That nobleness made simple as fire,

With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind

That is not natural in age like this,

Being high and solitary and most stern?

Why, what could she have done, being what she is?

Was there another Troy for her to burn?"

-William Butler Yeats-

(1865 - 1939)

A/N: Thank you everyone for reading!! Hope you liked it!! Tell me what you thought of it!


	4. At a Mortal War

Chapter Four: At a Mortal War

Tours, France

Arthur Catalonia walked into Saint Gatien's Cathedral; his quick foot falls echoing across the marble tiles which covered the floor of the Romanesque building. Father Chapuys had greeted him at the door as per usual. The old man was too friendly for his own good sometimes though he well made up for it when it came to his fiery preachings about the evils of the ongoing war they all now found themselves in.

The vertical panels of the colored stained glass stretching around the perimeter of the walls and over the pulpit cast a bluish hue over the stones of the floor and the empty wooden pews facing the alter.

Mass would be held in an hour, but as per usual Arthur would not be in attendance.

He was stretching it as it was, taking time he didn't have to drive into Tours just for fifteen minutes of prayer, but this place was sacred to him for another non-religious reason.

During the earlier years of subsequent conflict leading up to the war they were now in, Arthur's father, the late General Leonardo Catalonia, had grown up in Tours and had been a member of this congregation. While he was away fighting in the army on one of his first assignments, the Cathedral was bombed along with many strategic points in the city in which many civilian casualties were taken including Leonardo's father. Years later, after he had received his promotion to General, he left the army briefly to assist in the rebuilding of the historic Cathedral which was now fully restored to its original splendor.

Arthur slid into the pew closest the front of the massive church, and pulled down the kneeler before bending on both knees over it. In full military uniform, he didn't feel like the sort of man who should be at prayer now, more like the kind meant to hold a permanent seat in a confession booth with one hand glued to his hip holster, but he tried to push those feelings aside as he leaned forward and folded his hands under his chin.

As he began mechanically reciting the Our Father, his thoughts wandered back to his early life spent in this town, in this church. His late mother had been the daughter of one of his father's superiors, a man who had raised his children to know what the life a soldier meant for his home and family and as such, Arthur's mother had known full well what she was getting and also what was expected of her in going from a soldier's daughter to a soldier's wife.

And she had become the very best at what she did.

Whereas her husband's life had entailed fighting and winning battles in faraway nations, Helena Catalonia's life had revolved around her children and she would have had it no other way. She relished getting them up and ready for school in the morning, disciplining them when they went against the virtues she was teaching them, and playing with them when they needed a fourth for football. She had been a strong woman and their rock throughout the whole of their childhoods.

There had originally been five children, all sons, born to Leonardo and Helena Catalonia, but only three had survived into adulthood: Ferdinand, Arthur, and their youngest brother Victor who was not yet a full soldier. The other two had died young: Edmund, the eldest, had only lived five years. In personality, he was by far the meekest and most content of all of them to lead the life that they lived. He was always sickly and was often confined mostly to his bed due to doctor's orders and though it had irked him that he was never healthy enough to run and play with his brother's, he enjoyed being the subject of their mother's doting. However, in AC 154, when their mother was pregnant with Arthur, Edmund took horribly ill with a tough strain of pneumonia and had succumbed to it.

Gerard, the second eldest son, was born two years before Edmund's death and had outlived him by five years. Arthur's memories of him were fuzzy as he was very young when he had died, but he remembered him as an aggressive child who liked to wrestle and play football. There mother was always sitting him in a corner for something he'd done and he would usually be made to sit out games after he had lost his temper with a teammate or one of his brothers. After a particularly horrible outburst in which two other children were injured (one with a broken wrist, the other with a crushed nose), their mother had been forced to pull Gerard from school and had sent him to stay temporarily with her mother's family in a neighboring town. However, Gerard and their grandmother had died when the town came under heavy crossfire from an uprising between the military troops stationed there and members of the town's militia who did not agree with military policy.

Arthur had been twelve years old when both of his parents had died, his father from complications from an old war wound and his mother from lung cancer. And considering their family's losses, the three surviving brothers had joined the Alliance military and let it become their new family just as the regional military had been for their father before them.

It often disturbed Arthur how many of the people in his family history had grown up without their parents because they had died young. It was a family lineage of violence that predated even their family name. The Catalonia family was so named because they had originated in the foothills of the Principality of Catalonia in former Spain six hundred years ago. They had been called La Guardia then and they were the ruling ducal family of Barcelona until they were murdered by the rival family who pushed them out of power. All but one child was killed, Verdun La Guardia who would take on the surname Catalonia and come back for revenge. The Catalonia family had never regained its dukedom, but it had reinvented itself through military prestige and since then every Catalonia man had been a soldier of some kind.

Arthur and his brothers were no exception and their children probably wouldn't be either, though Arthur hoped for a different life for Dorothy.

She would be a beauty like her mother, no doubt, and war, on any level, didn't suit the truly beautiful.

He had the same hope for Ferdinand's children, but at heart, Arthur was more worried about Dorothy for the war was a much more threatening reality for her as she was connected to the Alliance through him and to the rest of the warring factions through the Romafeller Foundation and its leader, the Duke Dermail. War was much closer to corrupting her future in a drastic way than any of their own. Arthur and soldiers like him had made their beds with war and they were prepared to lie in them, but what about their children? Should they inherit the consequences of the generation who had come before them or who had raised them?

Arthur had.

He and his brothers had inherited their father's military legacy plus that of their entire family and had advanced it to a new paradigm. Arthur knew Ferdinand didn't want their history to repeat itself in the lives of his Michael and Maria just as Arthur wouldn't have it be so for his daughter, but could anything be done about it or was it just a continuous vicious cycle no matter what?

As he knelt there, bent over the back of the pew in front of him, Arthur prayed to God that such a thing was only a figure of his imagination.

Making the sign of the cross over himself, Arthur rose from his kneeling position and slumped back into the pew behind him as the last whispered pleas of prayers left his lips. Oh, what a hardship was made of war. In truth, he had to admit that he had only really begun to get used to having home cooked meals and hot showers during his short four months of leave from the Balkan front before being ordered back to the main European Theatre.

As always, Christina had been reluctant to see him go while his father-in-law had been far too overjoyed, even going so far as to call in a limo, which Arthur smartly declined, to take him to the base in Tours instead of the armored car which had been sent for him.

The blasted, old man was one needle in a haystack short of being an actual human being.

Though Arthur knew nothing of the Duke Dermail's previous military record, he was inclined to believe that the Duke had never seen combat, at least not firsthand. It was a common practice for the privileged sons of Romafeller's aristocratic leaders to join the military and Michael Dermail had been no exception to that rule. He had enlisted at eighteen, but as the only surviving son of the previous Duke Dermail, Emmanuel, and his wife the youngest Grand Duchess of Navarre, it was probably arranged that Michael would never set foot on a battlefield in person before he even set foot on the loading dock.

Too many influential leaders had lost their lives in the past to incomplete skirmishes fanciful personal duels and it was almost inconceivable that Romafeller should lose its future by losing its sons. It was an understood distinction within Romafeller and it was also a distinction that a Catalonia could not afford. They were and had always been front line soldiers. It was a known fact that a Catalonia man had died in every war since the family had been driven out of Barcelona and that so long as wars existed, there would be a Catalonia fighting in them.

Arthur took at deep breath, barely flinching as a barrage of machine gun fire echoed faintly through the church's stone walls, a testament to the fighting taking place between Alliance troops and the local faction of rebels in the nearby hills. Every so often the constant sound was interrupted by a short burst of silence or punctuated by a blast or two of artillery fire creating the concert ensemble of everyday war each side had become accustomed to over the past few years.

The first assaults always began with the advance of light infantry, tanks, and heavy artillery and ended quickly, for the most part, when mobile suit troops were deployed. Being a rather new weapon currently unmatched by anything else in the field, the mobile suit and the side that had them tended to decide the outcome of ground battles and at the moment, the Alliance military was on the up and up when it came to this particular tactical advantage.

Because of Romafeller's financial backing, the Alliance military had been able to build a few complete battalions mainly consisting of mobile suits and heavy artillery, but this was an expensive venue even for the aristocrats to keep up and so the majority of their units remained composed primarily of infantry. Though the strategic advantage of the mobile suit was still there for them to exploit, it was minimal at best. Until Dermail and his rich buffoon colleagues started forking over their entire fortunes and fitted the men of every platoon with their own mobile suits the military would be a shadow of what it could be, but Arthur didn't care.

The Bureaucrats and their petty squabbles weren't part of his job.

The fighting was all he had to concern himself with and all he would concern himself with. He had to keep fighting, keep winning battles so that one day they could end. It was the only real objective Arthur had and would ever have in the war.

Time in the massive cathedral passed and the sounds of the continuing battle were so commonplace to him that Arthur was able to pick out the creaking of hinges behind him though he did not turn to regard who had entered through the archaic carved doors. If it was an enemy, mercy be damned, he was through fighting in a war he had no stake in and which he did not believe in. If they were going to kill him, so much the better.

It was about time anyway.

But the footsteps were quick, not slow and calculated, but unsuspicious. The verbal beginnings of the sound began at the worn heel of a boot and sung through the old muddied leather, only echoing once the toe had laid flat against the ground and lifted up from it for another step. He sat and listened as the orchestrative process repeated itself over and over again as the unknown stranger advanced towards him.

It was the thudding sound of a soldier's boot, probably one of his staff officers.

Arthur leaned his head back against the hand rest of the pew behind him, relaxing his shoulders as he stared up at the cloistered ceiling. The trek from the doors to the front of the church was relatively short if the person walking it moved quickly, but even so, the short time lapse still gave Arthur a few short moments to himself and he made good work of them.

Staring up at the high stone arches that began in the middle like a parachute and branched out on four sides like a warped letter 'X', Arthur couldn't help thinking about the last few months spent on leave with his family. He had seen so little of them in the past year between individual assignments and deployments of his battalion to remote regions of the globe he didn't even want to think about anymore. The simple fact of the matter was that the Alliance military had lost a great deal of their major commanding officers to petty clashes and full scale engagements and it had become HQ's excuse for keeping Arthur and his fellow generals constantly at the front.

Arthur was a man of action. He didn't enjoy fighting in battles, no one man did, but he was not a man who could be put behind a desk and do any substantial good. He had to be engaged in something so that he could throw his whole self into it and his superiors could reap the rewards. It was the way it had always been and Arthur wouldn't have it any other way at all. As much as he missed his family, he very much doubted that he would be able to stay at home very long without getting restless for the thrill of combat again. He was what he was, there was no remedy for it.

However, even if this was true, Arthur was also a family man.

He loved his wife, passionately, honored her wishes and cares, and adored his small daughter who, gratefully, was so unlike himself. And he was proud of her. She was only three years old and already she knew what direction to go on the fork in the road before they reached the chateau and if you went the wrong way, she would tell you. She was very opinionated, his little girl, just like her mother in so many ways, though some of her physical traits took after him. Her eyes were his eyes. Her hair was his hair, but Dorothy's features were otherwise her mothers and aside from the defining blonde hair color, the two were almost identical in childhood photos taken of both at the same age.

She was very much her mother's daughter and Arthur was appreciative of that fact. He didn't want his only child growing up to be anything like him, to turn into the warmongering monster that he was. He was a soldier, for better or for worse, and he took the lives of other human beings on any given day of work. He killed so that he did not have to be killed himself and he would do anything to ensure that she would never have to see the things he saw everyday. But his child was not like him. She was kind and loving and talkative just like her mother was.

His dear Christina.

Now there was a very great lady and one he would do anything to protect. She was many things, his wife: she was a beauty without a match in this life with long soft ebony hair that flowed over her shoulders and deep contemplative blue eyes that made the oceans of the world appear shallow in comparison. She was a diplomat, a lover, an artist with an untamed heart, and a fighter right up until the bitter end. Her passionate, stubborn, and introspective spirit was what had captivated him and had set her above all other women in his eyes. There was no one else in this world that he esteemed higher than his wife, no one he would do anything for like he would her, not even for Ferdinand or his little girl.

He admitted it freely.

It was her he missed the most when he was away at the front and also who he worried for the most during his long absences. It was not easy to be the Duke Dermail's daughter and even more difficult was it to live in that house where the walls hemmed in the freest of souls until they caved in on themselves. Christina was a strong woman, the strongest Arthur knew of and not even he would cross her on most things, but he was not sure she would be able to withstand the weight of the pressure her father exerted upon her in all things. She was Dermail's daughter, his only surviving child after three miscarried sons, and therefore his family's only heir and what had she gone and done to him? She had married a Catalonia, a lowly soldier who's family had lost all title and ennoblement hundreds of years earlier. She had defied her father to marry him and Arthur was sure the Duke would never forget it.

Every time the two crossed paths, the Duke was always crass and short with him and there was no mistaking the loathing in the old man's eyes. Every time, Arthur left for the battlefield the Duke would smile a rare smile, just for him, and he was sure it was a silent wish for his demise in combat just so his daughter, the last of his proud bloodline, could remarry properly and they could erase the blemish of the Catalonia name on their beloved family tree. And that was not all. The old man had not given up yet. Just because his daughter was already married, didn't mean she had to stay that way.

Quite often, Christina would mention moments in her letters to him where her father had introduced her to some fellow official's son and had suggested that the two take a walk and spend some "personal" time getting to know one another. However, his wife was just as stubborn as her father and if he was going to play unfairly, she was going to play at his level and so she often made fiascos of his arrangements with the men he picked out for her.

Christina was many things, but she was not defenseless nor was she a push over. She fought back, always, and quite often she won.

His dear Christina.

She worried so much for Arthur's well being because of all of the small mercies she had come upon in her entire life, he was the only one that mattered to her, her saving grace.

She was a kind and loving woman, but by no means was she simply that. She had a spirited side to her that no woman alive could match and God have mercy on the man who thought he could tame her. Arthur certainly couldn't, nor did he want to, he wasn't brave or stupid enough.

There was no sympathy, no understanding for the love she bore him in that house of binding walls and constant unwelcome pressure, none from her parents and thanks to the absolute power her father wielded as the patriarch of the family, no support came from her extended family or the other young ladies of the foundation either. There were no friends for her to lean on, none she could trust that were not under her father's influence, really. She was a scion of strength onto herself and only onto herself could she rely for the fortitude to endure in the small, small world hemmed in by the foundation's high and lofty fortifications.

The graceful lady locked in the tower without a key, that's what she was, and the tower was burning…

"General."

Arthur closed his eyes, knowing that his time of quiet contemplation was finally up. "What is it, Lieutenant Grafton?"

The other man must have been surprised that his boss could tell his identity without even looking back at him once for there was a measured pause before he spoke again.

"What isn't it you mean, don't you, sir? Colonel Banzhaf and his troops are coming down into the city from the fighting in the countryside and they are requesting medical and martial aid. It appears the local faction they have been fighting in the forests has been all but wiped out. However, the Colonel requests your help in tracking down and annihilating the survivors as an example to the civilians living here just so they don't get any more rebellious ideas. Doesn't that beat everything?"

Arthur rubbed at his eyes and tipped his head forward. "He's no better than Septum chasing civilian shuttles and looting resource satellites in space. Tell him we will send transport vehicles for him to start bringing his wounded into the city and alert the third and first mobile suit companies to prepare themselves. We have a lot of work ahead of us."

"Yes, sir."

"And Louis?"

"Yes, General?"

"When was the last time you were issued new boots?"

* * *

Mine eye and heart are at a mortal war

How to divide the conquest of thy sight.

Mine eyes my heart thy picture's sight would bar,

My heart mine eye the freedom of that right.

My heart doth plead that thou in him dost lie,

A closet never pierced with crystal eyes;

But the defendant doth that plea deny,

And says in him thy fair appearance lies.

To cide this title is impaneled

A quest of thoughts, all tenants to the heart,

And by their verdict is determined

The clear eyes' moiety and the dear heart's part.

As thus: mine eyes' due is thy outward part,

And my heart's right, thy inward love of heart.

-William Shakespeare-

(1564 – 1616)


End file.
